You shed your skin and bare your flesh to the cruel world, convinced you deserve to be treated kindly because you carry the weight of three dozen lifetimes and an era of pain within you.
When the sun and cold touched you, you complained, cried when it burned the darkness from your heart and left you naked at the summit of desire.
Salt dries in swales at your porcelain feet. Flesh dries to scale. You asked to swim. Now you want to fly.
I think about how I can lie to you so as not to break you
with my breath.