Parchment
I have traveled all the while
in my own lugubrious skin,
have skinned my knee
and stubbed my toe,
have damned the nail and hammer.
Outside the wind
by season moves
cold and hot, warm and cool
travels across my face and limbs.
I have traveled alone,
with the pack
have hunted
flesh with flesh,
have embraced your form,
built aqueducts
to bridge the walled divide,
heard the blood rush through my skull
felt it in my heart,
and seen it spill across your thighs.
Yet by muscle I am known,
medium between flesh and bone
that moves arm, wrist and fingers,
to travel length and width
again and again
and again and again --
the story told
of skin on skin.