place your hands on either side of my ribs and feel my pinky-stretched muscles twist and grind with the earth’s orbits
tap your finger on my temple and listen to the bones hollowed-out by termites that run on memories
hold my wrists above my head and look at the stretched skin of my stomach so translucent you can see the treasure map I etched all over me
these bodies are sponges absorbing the wind into our hips and sprawling our fingers to try and catch the air and stick it back into our lungs muscling through the salty waves that stain our cheeks a raw pink and erode our invincible confidence and chip our pearly smile
we grab for our surroundings with a dying necessity and sew them into ourselves so that we are patched into an identity
so when we are tired of being ragdolls pieced together by our triumphs and failures we begin to choose any fabric regardless of the color, shape, or size just to cover the holes we have created
then we face the mirror to see our what is left
we are disappointed not by our own mouths but the ones on the faces behind us looking past their own holes and into our own
where you can see the taught fibers of stretched muscles the tunnels termites have created in ivory bones and pale skin pulled tight around panting lungs.