milky bathwater shows
no traces of the adventures
and the creatures
of my late endeavors
and of my imaginations.
how many animals devour my
flesh. (when i am waking
and when i am sleeping.
and someday in eternal sleep.)
flesh
against the earth
like a rooting seed in my youth
and someday into the earth dissolving.
and looking toward
the branches, the leaves, the sky
in moments of forgettingness.
light and shadow
on my imaginations. feeling their
feet on my skin.
wings
beating against my flesh.
flesh against my flesh
and the earth,
like myself amidst the clays
of creation.
and looking at how
your eyes look the color
of the leaves that surround you.
i am taken by this.
you, once like the sea, and
then like the trees.
and i am unwinding into
tiny strings
and rooting myself
in the earth and the sky and the branches
and you.
i feel almost certain of things
living inside of me.
and how hearts beat in
others' chests
and they are living outside of me.
the greatest love affair
of my willpower destiny
sidetracked with
bodies collapsing into soil.
and aware of the warmth
of the sunlight, traveling,
only touching portions of my flesh.
and those eyes
blending like a leaf and then the sky
and in my memories, the seas.
i am aware of the
movements inside of me.
my imaginations
intertwining with truth.
how many animals devour my
flesh.

only a year passing
since the first endeavors,
save the mosquitoes
of my childhood. tunneling
things in my skin,
my skin.
tossing twigs and assorted
bits of rock and caved insect
exoskeletons into a
milk jug.
jeremiah the
parasitic worm of my imaginations.
and ezekiel of
triumphant days possibility.
my sleeping head
on pillows and on earth.
and those crawling
living things
against my flesh.
crawling inside me.
my imaginations
or my truths.
and milky bathwater
with no traces
save the milky skin with
dots of red, a speckle
beneath the knee, sprinkles
on the breast, flecks
on the flesh, a circle
on the foot. and the things
i feel moving inside myself.
jeremiah, and then ezekiel's death
in my imagination.
and this flesh then against my flesh.
strings unwinding into
roots.

-june 1, 2008
marie porterfield