Skinbag

♦ Sophie Stein ♦

When I was in my youth, I used to sink into the hands of knowing souls,

perfection escaping treble-flighted children

Asseverate eternal love, like girlhood it's hard to come by. 

When my gold faded, you rejected the innocence and from angel wings of flight feathers dropped

Human nature was always too heavy to garner wings 

Cut a wax-paper girl from a perfectionist's notebook, immune to flammation, her ribs erode the circle—quereality spans the concave truth of time

so I could still drop into your hands from the high hills of Sisyphus

                                                       … 

If we are trapped inside our skinbags,

foolish mortal beings, such that we compare ourselves to stars, ephemerally reaching into the core of themselves, toying with passing time—at least they desired something at all;

humans—we are devoid of a goal

perpetually answering questions with questions of our own, we wheel and wander and cast aside mortality

yet we forget that we will never outdo the sum of what consumes us—something intangible we can't attain

I am no more than the pen to my paper and thus I profess not to write at all

                                                       … 

Then when we bleed—crimson hooks over white-streaked lines, 

The plush innards of the beggar woman's guitar case

pleading for a morsel of self-dejected worth 

razorblades tracing wings into our extremities,

souls take on an ounce of freedom of their own

and tears erupt 

from willing geysers