exaltation

O skin. Inside you my bags
and rivers find language. If ever
I wished rid of your grammar—
if ever I wished flay (strung
over white laundry in sinew
and that opulent crimson-going-black
beneath jeweled buzz, only gray tail
furred still, a stole at wrong end amidst
such incoherent caterwaul there was no
determining end) I was wrong
to wish it. Although you stutter
you spit more than before and fit
me ill—I listen like a fish through purple
under-eye sleeplessness and know
if soul then soul is not pools, is
the scratch and brush the near-static of
your seven-day renewal. You alter
but refuse to clear scar. Even
as you double over, retract within me
vocals of aureole, of freckle, mole
and the worm-slash up my ankle-back
-calf where I gave unnatural
loud birth to a slippery achilles, newly
twinned, eel-shredded, I accept you
unbook are my best record and home.