I cross the street <br />and my skin falls off. Who walks <br />to an abandoned lake? Who <br />abandons lakes? I ask questions <br />to evade personal statements. When you are <br />skinless, you cannot bear to be <br />more vulnerable. With skin, I <br />would say I am in love with <br />Love as in that old-time song <br />crooners like to croon. With skin, <br />I would wear elbow-length opera gloves <br />of pearly satin. Protect my skin. <br />Hide it. There is no skin <br />like my skin. How I miss it — <br />I miss it as I would a knitted bonnet, a <br />pewter teaspoon to stir sugar into hot water. <br />My great passion was my skin. The lover <br />I loved. They don't <br />sell skin at Wal-Mart. And really, how <br />could I, humanely, buy it? Would you ever <br />give me your skin? This is a terrible world <br />we live in. There are mistakes and <br />batteries littering a junk drawer, <br />where Mother would hide my house keys and Father <br />would store his eyeballs. Do you know <br />Puccini? Do you spill silk <br />at the gorgeous onslaught of love, of Pinkerton's <br />lurking return? Butterfly had no skin either <br />but you could not tell from the outer left <br />balcony. As I lay in a bed <br />of my dead skin, I dream of Butterfly <br />and what she could have done instead: <br />run away to this little room <br />to lose her aching voice, to listen <br />to the hourly ringing of bells <br />that is really the souring birdsong <br />of a child, skinned and <br />laughing, a child that will never be hers.<br /><br />Jennifer Chang<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/the-skin-s-broken-aria/
