Untitled XII
Location
You are asking me to strip
and strip
and strip
and strip
and strip
away all the skins I have gathered
to protect me from this question
I'm fine sloughs away first, but
that layer was always intended to shed
in daily battles, armed, with how are you todays
You are asking me to strip away
exoskeleton smiles, warrior braids and long words
(the kind that flop and defuse the question by tangling
the one who asked in unfunny and confusion), to claw at
the hardened layer
of number grades, letter labels,
the one hundred and one personality tests laying who I am bare
(ISTP, you'd make a great embalmer, a fake wizarding house
2370, 3.98, 142
old soul in a young body)
You and I will have to dig through the carnage of who we thought I was,
because I don't remember the shivering thing
I first wrapped a changeling pelt around.
My name, in Chinese
is a homophone for forgetting -- my teacher says to me with a straight face
it seems I've forgotten your name
while letting the two syllables slide off her tongue glibly.
Maybe that's why, most days, I am
half-made beds and half-fulfilled intentions
dreaming at day of being asleep and dreaming at night of being awake
where are the other halves? you may ask, and I will respond
gone
vanished in the impossible point between
that universe and now, a place only
the geometry of the heart and mind can find
So I can't go.
I'll have to find my heart first.