The itch starts at her eyes
and sweeps down the pulsing
muscle of her body.
She swells and shimmies
around fossil-pocked boulders,
silvered driftwood.
When she can’t find a bristled
surface, she loops into her own
strained and crusty flesh
and peels
herself
from herself.
She’s a single-limbed ballerina
tugging off her tights,
a wrinkled pool
of inside-out skin
coiled beside her,
traces of grass and beetle grub
still etched in its grooves,
her quaking spine sealed
in the gauze of new skin.
First Published in Awakenings Review.
