America's Onion

When America owns its skin it will not be defined by a color. How could it? I could touch it maybe: Run my hands down its cracked lunar surface with seismograph wrinkles all across its forehead and kicks of baby feet all down its spine. Caress its memories, its holiness, and its barbed wire pain then stroke where no skin exists: where there is only an air that can breathe bullets- an air that never stopped its knowing that it takes one ripple from a butterfly’s wing to create a hurricane and the gentlest little kiss to create flight. If I strain to hear maybe the slightest sound might emerge like a volcano popping below the surface before bursting free: it sounds like a foot making a print, like the beat of a heart, like a teapot whistling in our lungs, like a whisper. We are the tapping of the Morse code message: you may not understand our pattern but there is meaning in what was said. And if it looks like we’re talking- we are really just eating- I swear. We have too much to eat- of our past, present, and that holy, holy, frontier- it smells like hope, that skin that surrounds us. That nation, my nation: I dare you to define it as a color. There are too many layers inside, darling- we have too many layers inside