For relief

 

flay my body

set the pieces out and pull apart the layers of my skin and find malignancies and origins and

lines that lead slack to salt licks

porous bones

lungs thick rubber

smell of burning tires in the morning

heavy air

smoke and oil

blood pooled up and viscous, sticky till you soap-clean these hardtack veins

seal my cavities and pores

I can’t breathe beneath these vapors dispersing in the vault

 

I am shedding skin, loose tears, fingernails

until winter buries me below bare limbs

I can only hope you will cut me up and call me blessed beneath the sky and burn my flesh

pull the dirt from my ancient, empty chest

and I’ll escape the finitude of firmament with the last dying light

 

I am too tired for resurrection