My Birthday Suit

It’s a risky business, dressing myself.
Naked, I am least exposed.
I was built from the outside in,
swaddled early in soft, fibrous love
grafted onto my raw bones in tight stitches,
so I could bear myself upright.

Now, it’s difficult.
Every morning, I find my seams have gaped.
When I walk from my bed to the toilet,
the burlesque clatter of beads dogs my steps. I leak
a trail of sequins from between my thighs,
attracting the crows.

I am turning inside out.

I can reach inside and finger
the soft, wet nap of my life,
and digging deeper into my disgorged trunk,
pull a rag of lace, bitten by my bile
into delicate patterns, to hold up to the light.

My skin is nothing,
I am turning inside out.

I cannot find the dress that was my mother.
Whipcord pleated habit.

The hobbling platform boots that were my father’s shoulders
have lost a silver buckle.

A carnival panic rises
from the folds of my true nature
tangled at my feet, in intestinal shreds,

My skin is nothing.

I can’t get everything back inside,
and I cannot leave without it;
I will have to put it on,
all of it.