I Am Thinking Always of Exposed Skin
“Thicket of Trash” by Lydia Armstrong
I am thinking always
of exposed skin.
Fuck—yes,
I know what that word means, it means
movement it means joining it means
forty-year wilderness—
it means the world has borne witness
to the scar on my knee—and
who am I
to say whether or not I am ashamed
of the moving or the witness, the whiteness.
My mother said: a scar is the temple veil at dusk sewn together out of panic
Remember, it says, someone has died
so that you can be free—remember
that nobody on either side knows
which is more sacred:
to be whole or naked.
What I know is that my scars
are shaped like a river
stone stolen from where
priests stood in the Jordan
the day a nation crossed to another nation
