Unseen Architecture of the Skin
we keep our bodies in layers,
like a river keeps its bed.
this surface , this inked architecture,
is but a trellis
for a deeper growth.
I am watching the transparent version of you
hover, like a cloud in a glass house.
you bend , the light showing
the phantom trace of your spine,
the clear, unhurried arc of your neck.
you look back at yourself--
the other you,
the one with skin,
etched with patterns and circles,
a map of all that has been held.
is this how you decide which face to wear?
one of a girl,
another of an ancient man,
a memory ghost waiting to be fed.
at the periphery,
your hands drift like smoke,
almost meeting.
one with fingerprints and geometric lines,
and one that is just a gesture.
a humming-bird on a single thread-
an impossible physics--
is being fed or led,
and it does not know the difference.
we exist between this solid,
pattern-matched bone
and the desire to be nothing but the light
that passes through.
the body is the first mask,
and the first mirror.
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