paper-mâché

musings on the fragility of skin

I know you fold inwards,

Like the paper-mâché elephant in my room.

i. to that unfinished work-of-art

i know you fold inwards,

like the paper-mâché elephant in my room.

i know you hiss like the paper-dove

pinned to my ceiling fan.

my skin, i know you

separate like a paper-cobra—

all wide-eyed and undone.

and i know you often take to the sky,

and become the manuscript

flittering in the wind.

and like the mold plastered to the walls of my flat,

i know you are fragile as paper:

only one-millimeter thick.

bleeding lady,

sticky-noted, snipped, and covered in jotted words,

your inky tears congregate.

i know you are merely

a one-millimeter paper-mâché doll;

too brittle to make,

and too stubborn to fall.

---

And if there is some place worth falling—

I hope that place lies in your paper-butterfly tears.

ii. a nasty fall

glued pieces falling in hystery—

bought and brought by me.

arts-and-crafts:

a skin-on-skin dissection,

polka-dotted arms and diatribes—

i am a montage:

a paper-clipped conglomeration,

a tight-lipped, fair-headed devastation.

i am a collage

of every chewed, bitten, and spitted thing.

and if there is some place

worth falling, i hope that place lies

in your paper-butterfly tears.

and sometimes, as i lie to sleep,

in my dreams, i fly as a paper-bumblebee:

a flower-sipper and a drunken dancer,

until i am

hit

with

water.

---

If I am meant to be marred in constellations,

Let they be my only guide.

iii. surfacing

a skin-papery thing,

creeping up from the shallows.

lifted by buoyancy only to

watch waves capsize

like paper-mâché butterflies in flight,

covering my skin in tears.

chaos erupting like a chain of

shooting stars.

my paper world comes to life—

elephants, doves, cobras and dolls,

butterflies and bumblebees and paper shards.

so, shall it be.

if i am meant to be marred in constellations,

let they be my only guide.

let them show me through the night,

let them form paper fireflies:

tiny dots of

brilliant

light.

---

I know I can fold outwards,

Like the paper-mâché stars in my room.

iv. to that work-of-art

the water, my great foe—

come to rest on carved shore.

on it, tips a tiny paper-boat

of hope.

and if it comes the time

for the sails to be tested and the

wind nigh—

i know i can fold outwards

like the paper-mâché

stars

in my room.

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