love before lost gone

When you scissor the ribbons of your childhood apart,
ask them when they were formed…
Ask them when and how they were tied
and strengthened
and with what epoxy.

Wandering alone in woods.
Forgetting Halloween.
Cutting your knuckles.
Getting lost.
Hungry.

When did this moment blast so fully away
to reveal itself?

I do not know.
I do not know.

But when it did
I heard a sound like myself
crawling from my own dead skin,
and then I looked back on my dead skin self
and it was sleeping in my bed
next to my girlfriend, and
she touched it, thinking she was touching me.

So I wandered out into the night,
my new white self unaccustomed to air
and because of that, I dispersed.