my skin: the vessel that binds all the pieces together. but every day a part of me goes—hair pulled from a comb, nails clipped, cells washed away with the kohl.
***
the night before, as you fell asleep,
one ragged dress. sleeves sliding off your shoulders, down your arms. with a gentle pull at the waist it slips over your hips and to the floor where it gathers at your feet. you could step out of the pool of lace and silk and thorns, but you look at it and it reminds you of all your sinking feelings, piling up. you are a statue of skin cast in composites and aged to a familiar off-white; the ragged dress holds you firmly to the ground.
if you step over of the ragged dress, you acknowledge the body in front of you. you give it the okay. you move forward to a union of skin and nails and mouths and hair and pearls dangling precariously on fragile collarbones. if you step over the ragged dress and reveal your ankles and your toes, you fall into an accident. you topple over into the hands that let it slide off your shoulders, down your arms, over your hips, and at your feet. if you step over the ragged dress, you become a ghost without a shell, sprouting the leaves of your unbecoming. and so you pause in the mirror, for the love of two bodies and one ragged dress in between—it’s not like any words were about to come out of your mouth.
as you wake up the sun is already halfway through the sky and ready to hand it over to the moon. it is a timely game of tag that the two go through every day, and when the moon is but a sliver in the sky the sun struggles to catch her hand.