POETRY
Peeling off layers.
Words by Hannah Hayden & illustration by Olivia Domingos
I have traded every limb for silence.
Instead of photographs, my pasts are cast
in scaly sheaths,
I dance for weeks at a time
before dying in another silk
and the warm-blooded,
wrapped in dead blankets,
with pelt stretched
over a whole life,
to me it is not right
but
don’t they love things that always are?
and isn’t that how it always is?
the endurance of a hide
before being found:
he claws out the muscle and rips off the skin
scouring for source
I do not even remember my maiden name,
nor the pattern of the scales on her back—
But I can leave my hides behind,
rushing over grass,
in my strange ulterior dance
or
bolt like a blunt knife,
dropping another negligee
but not revealing
that I too coil in fear
to sleep, alone, in a sacral knot.