dead skin

i spend most of days trying to believe it’s
possible to have flesh so riotously soft,
a bird’s nest formed in His pallid skin,
hollowing light in His hands, His feet.
the dead Christ with a rebecoming
lost inside him – overgrown with all
the immortal things that stayed behind
and would not leave. it’s absurd, i know –
to want a body that leaves nothing behind,
to want skin that is only skin and not
memory grafted onto me.

lately i know everything – the way widening
scabs tear into pestilence-colored shades
of waning moons, the body filling with
drowned beehives, barbed berries
lodging into old scars. this is a war i
have learned to love my entire life.
i guess i just mean to say what do you do
with a yearning like this? and where do you
go with skin this strange, this abstracted?
i walk in on the same body every day
and today she is the end of all things