Soap Without a Name

Soap Without a Name I touch my face so much, I'm worried it will wear down like soap. No discipline, Dad says. But the truth is, I have it in spades. Yet like a marble dropped in a bowl of water, I have sunken into my body, prepared in a pure film of cosmic blood. Go to sleep, my mother told me. I tell her it does nothing. Sleep makes me tired of being alive, and I break into a fever where the language of my DNA oozes over me like lukewarm wax. Am I of my body? Am I impossible? But then I'm reminded that even diamonds become dust, suns lose their fire and die, and orchids have grown from concrete. They say Saturn devoured his own son. I've seen the painting. Such maroon. Such tenebrism. Such light. The first day of red is the first day of dead. That's what the guy on the bus said to me, scratching his wrists, mumbling vespers. He may be right. We rouge the earth with our bones, and I've buried lovers too many times. And I keep thinking we're like soap, often borrowed, nameless and worn down, and I touch my face again.