I may have no choice
but to lie to my skin
and try to convince it that
the million flinches and itches
it is feeling are not reflective
of a restlessness within,

but are the marks of small assaults
from outside the perimeter. I will say,

we are under attack
by everything.

This will work,
I think, if I can keep my skin
from looking into my eyes.
My eyes won’t ever back me up.

I refuse to be daunted by this.
Lying to my skin, closing my eyes,
I’m going to beat this —

allowing the forces colliding among my organs
to roam and smash me awake again and again,
all the while pretending peace reigns there

while the black night closes in and seeks weakness,
breaches, the stray mutinous hair that will fall from me
leaving one follicle open to a manufactured danger
on which I can blame everything.

no one can say
if this is exactly how it happens
but we know it is true:

you are born dumb
but you will learn someday
that something ancient exists
that is yours,
that was made
for you.

you may be a child upon its arrival,

or you may find it
later, stroking
your own child’s head
as he lies in a fever.
cooling his skin
with compresses
while you recognize
the presence standing by the door,
you may be moved to chant
the long story:

there is a dance
for it in every lost village.
there is an arrowhead somewhere,
a million years old,
that was chipped
by a tiny, tufted thing —
barely a human at all —
that stone
was its first home
and now, you hold the deed.

there is something ancient
that was made for you. in order
to preserve itself it chooses you
in the place you are most ready
to receive it. it lives because
you live, because we live…

we don’t know how it happens.
this is just the way it is.