skin tight

I see it now, my body parts laid across a table and displayed, grotesquely in a pattern of fillet and general dismemberment. Even the muscles are open for all to see, pinned and labeled. All given a formal name, more distinguished in part then I ever was whole. Backing up, I can see the whole, more than pieces and what I see could be nothing less than human, whereas in parts who knows...a sort of squidtopus or limp mollusk from another world?

Who is to blame for this thing done to me? The foul deed needs a villain, be it Asian mastermind, a scribe with his quill. Or maybe a simple musing heiress with the devil on her shoulder, whispering vile deeds in the guise of sweet nothings.

The student artists gather round now, recording my despair, brush stroking canvas. The squares rest upon an easel, translated into geometrics or self serving self portraits, all knees and elbows, laid open for admirers and critics alike. How does this slight woman see in the monstrous display an engine cut in twain? Why does one ask? She sits astride a tricycle invention with a planetary globe to hide her features. She seeks anonymity in the whole, giving my parts new life and a noble function. If only I could tarry and discover my new name; alas.

Even now I feel this will all be arranged upon a parchment, bound and distributed to any who care. What have I become if not some diversion for the masses? If so how will it differ from a postage stamp licked and stuck on preposterous correspondence, what is so unique about my bit of flesh next to an etching of a pretty girl who admires her form upon an ebony reflection? The scribe scribbles furiously to keep pace with my reproof.

I would sooner hold in my hand a blackened sun then paste morbid anatomies onto my library wall. My only recollection of her reveals her bound in foil, dancing in the desert with its alien trees, arms like clubs raised to batter all who approach. She took me into a corner room and sat across me on a chair folding her arms into each other like an optical illusion. She bowed and her neck was smooth like porcelain, white as the naked hands she laid upon her knee. We met in the middle and now I can see in retrospect there were two of each, she and I, leaning in for a kiss and reflected upon each window in the corner room.

The only way out was to go further in, for to retreat was to smash the facade and break apart like ceramic figurines in a play about love and loss. I wasn't willing to sacrifice what we had. I would have given the world, or run wild in the abstract cloth of a wild Ubiquitous before I relinquished the gift she laid upon my brow. Now from my ethereal stance perhaps my sight is clearer. She is behind the easel, painting a tilted square, relegating my lost soul to mathematics. Our love was a magic act, I was the skeleton in the portrait, eerily laid to rest.

Even as a child I found it difficult to learn, resting my head on the desk in a plaid universe. Then, I felt like an animal in a zoo, one among many, a naked procession of muddied specimen chained for perusal of the elders. A chosen few were braided and set into collections, ogled on from spectators on goggled shelves. If we ran it was only to fall into a gutter and lay there dreaming of vast tentacled atrocities and tiny words that only twins with superior eyesight used in tandem could translate. Even then I could see her, smiling with a hand upon her hip, leading me unsuspecting into the maw of an ancient subterranean, with only my tibia to ward off evil spirits – how was I to know?

No sign could have been more apparent than the one she herself held, but I only saw the white sand, not the tug of war between the inhumane and heinous alike. I rode into their midst and they squeezed me like a ham, dripping in agony, in ecstasy, foreshadowing my portrait in advance. I was with her when she reclined, open as could be in a mesh wrap, she said my time was numbered and the number was two. There was no doubt, it was written on my skin. With the right illumination she could count my teeth, the only bones to see the light of day. And the string around my fingers, and the moths alighting, buzzing and hoarding precious space upon my pate, all told the tale of my life, of my loves, my failures and my conquests.

I couldn't see then what I see now, her easy way and beauty, hidden by a strange light that cast a shadow on her face. Was it a cricket that only a pinprick, a ray of sun, would clarify? Was she a fancy contradiction in a soda glass dressed in frills? She was abstract and two faced – one face born out of another – graphed and charted, lips in a vast circle of conspiracy. I thought I was in color, but now I know she is black and white, born of serf and pecked by raptors. Amalgamous, obtuse, two in an envelope and poured viscous onto black tile.

My time has come, a meal unto itself that only a relevant slug could fathom. My eyes are in the palm of my hand, a receptacle of sight. I have but one skull, but two empty sockets that will never see another beauty bound, no sumptuous crustacean or chariot on the wind. My bones lie stacked, floundering in a vortex, riding a blank highway on flaccid wheels that tell no stories, no tales to be mowed into the lawn or etched upon a virgin's captive flesh. She sold me out for a star atop a verdant green. She stole a bauble for my soul, and many hands together and many feet in unison and couples stretched as one touching skin in skin will never touch her empty breast that I once believed teemed in color. There was no truth in the fires she wrought and her grin lies naked to the netherworld I dwell. My reach is powerless. I am nothing now.