LES FLEURS DU MAL.

I am trapped in a car
with my bickering family,
hurtling down familiar roads
with no way out.

Against a background music
of argument and complaint,
my mother ridicules my father,
my father builds up steam.

It’s only a matter of time
until he explodes
and she retaliates—
their orgasm of sorts.

I tune them out
with a language
they can’t understand,
repeating Baudelaire’s verses
until I know them by heart.

Visions of voluptuous evil,
grandeur and decay,
capture and comfort me
from my ordinary evil.