Birch

Walking
In the woods
I find
Your thin skin
Rent
And peeling
In sheets

Seeing
Into the layers
Opening
Between limbs
Your pale
Clean
Coral

Tearing
Away the paper
To uncover you

I take a shred
Dusty with neglect

And look
At your lenticular script
The brown freckles
In their field of flesh
Benign
And unaffected

I walk
Around you
Staring


--Flint Hills Review, 2006