frostbite

the morning had no tongue or breath.
relearning how to talk to trees
i stumbled with a pocket of girlhood.
the flesh becomes a playground. 
all the boys come with fireworks 
in their eyes. a pepper spray birthday. 
turning seventeen inside a bomb.
outside, everyone is dying. outside
everyone is living on roots. carrots 
& rusted pipes & the legs of our grandfathers.
you do not know you skin is dying
until it is too late. burning. a race inside
blood. bone turned into sculpture. 
moving the limb & saying, "alive
alive." nothing. on the other side
of numb is an electric fence. the cows 
wear sweaters. i shake my body 
trying to find my heart. it is like
panning for gold. i wait too long. 
inside the barn by a space heater's
red glowing prophecy. the other farm hand says,
"we have to get you inside." i see the plum-colored skin.
the oceans come to sing there. dead dolphins 
& a fishman without a face. some doesn't return.
turns into catacombs. a hymn 
to my former body. the cold is not
an absence of gender but a machine of it.
instead of man and woman i purpose
helpless and whole. i was neither.