Skin

for Jessamyn Smyth, on her birthday

She worried at first
when her skin began to dry and peel
and fragments of it lifted and curled

like the scales of a fir cone.
The air was cold on
muscle and fat, and the grit

was unmerciful: it was only reasonable
to suppose the turn was fatal.
But later, as the flakes fell soft, and fluttered down

She felt viscera blossoming,
and strands unwinding,
and she understood

that everything was opening,
that the bones were unfolding
their gorgeous petals of marrow,

the blood was glistening
on the tip of each arteriole,
fine nets of nerve were

rooting in the ground and pulsing in the sky.
Not even the grit
could find purchase;

not even the dust
could annoy, and sleep
would come again like the shadow

of purple
on a little girl’s eyelids
when her father lifts her from the car seat

and tenderly
carries her into the house.
Home now: home at last.