THE THREAD | A Note to Skin
A NOTE TO SKIN
Oh layer of skin, just look what you do.
You ridiculous human flesh, you.
You pucker, pimple, wrinkle, rash.
You tense and go slack. You goose bump.
In the light of summer you grow darker,
and look, in the darkness of winter, light!
You are prone to many problems:
You are altered by fire,
split by sharp edges of glass.
You whump against something hard and you bruise.
You scab and scar, you sometimes rip beyond repair.
Yet almost always you move toward yourself,
trying to heal it all back together.
An ornery child might pinch or bite you.
See how the small white dents appear
then slowly vanish?
You gather into forehead canyons,
stretch thin over ridges of shoulder blades.
Over a knee or elbow you buckle and bulb.
Over the knuckles you get squeezed between fingers,
and look how you stay in place like formed clay.
Over those same knuckles and knees on a dry afternoon
you ash, you return to dust, you slough away.
Some might strike you, grab you, hold you down, worse.
You tighten, contract. You go taut over tense muscles.
You are the hard shell of a clinched fist.
You are the soft petal of an opening palm.
By the hands of another, the touch of a lover,
look how you can grow so soft once again.
You receive enough, you believe enough,
yes, just enough to let some wild god slide in.
You feel a new incarnation begin.
Just beneath you a holy ocean flows and churns and brims.
~ ~ ~
What I'm reading: Luis Alberto Urrea's Into the Beautiful North
What I'm listening to: Chris Thile's Laysongs, The New Pornographers' Twin Cinema
~ ~ ~
Peace,
Andrew