In order to see

Every pore is a tiny lamp.
All my hair is erect, illuminated, beautiful.

She said there’s nothing in here I can’t handle so

I wade up to my lungs in liquid
it is black ink, warm like a bath.

Inside my nail bits are darting around in the liquid
flashlights looking for food.

And my lungs are just hanging there
like hardened fruit, dipped in the dark.
I think of carving one into a mask
and the other into a pirogue.
I’m looking for a way back home.

Feeling around with my toes,
what kind of thing is a home
if it makes me feel like I have to go
backwards to go forwards?

I have to see what it is in order to change it.

I feel something sliding under my knee.
it is a sickening revelation.

My skin is hot from all the lamps
and i still can’t see shit. I don’t know what
I want a home to be, so I keep floating
backwards to decide what its always been.

I thought I found it in my hands
drawing squares topped with triangles
over and over, rectangle chimney, curly smoke, someone is home.

I found it in my breath
more like a wish, then not. It is in my throat like a lid.

Frustrated by what I can only touch and
overwhelmed with the serious possibility that
my memory is going blind.