how your hands work against the grain of my skin
pulling out the stitches roots attached & quivering
like so many fingers crawling from a smoky river
somewhere i am small lying in perfected stillness
on top of the picnic table in my childhood backyard
i am pretending to be dead i leach the day through patient eyelids
& fever in the sun i can smell the boy next door
draped over the fence yesterday’s rain now a layer of ash in his shirt
& moist earth trapped beneath his fingernails
i can feel his eyes birthing a song over my body
a sea breaks its lines unseen
a story swells like a castle of shadows & stretches over my bones
my skin furrows into valleys of violets & folds into
a slow burn
how your hands winter on the west side of my body
how sometimes they are full of weeping
how sometimes they sing to restitch me:
Let me show you a new way to remember this.
