My body is a map
One that isn’t pinned up by pushpins
On plenty of pinning boys bedroom walls
Too big to see individual trees but big enough
To hold hopes and dreams
Strung together by red lines and black words
That title places they have yet to have seen
But man, how they wish they could visit me.
No, my body is more of a landscape
Still sitting on a easel that belongs to an artist
Who cannot bring himself to hang me up yet
Who can’t yet declare my permanence with a tac
My body is like that that.
Held in a state of constant change but only minutely
My mountains and streams haven’t changed for years
But the leafs on my branches transform ever so slightly
With aging paint brush strokes
That only I and my artist know are there
My features have no home
No place on a map to pin
They hold a kind of secret place that only
Few have seen but none could not say wasn’t me
But I still look similar to places they have already seen
No, my body is more like art.
When I was born I was naked like you
Pale with promise
And over time I was colored with age
I was wrinkled with paint
And damaged with a sometimes heavy hand
But even with the same wood skeleton as you
My un-uniformed array of colors
Only represent what I really am.