inBetween

Kae Winter
Lamia

The faceless palm
my left hand staring
the bare bedroom ceiling.
 
It is looking for her body again—
So what? —
You have not seen her crawling the upside-down floors after midnight?
 
The faceless palm does not know it
self
joined together, piece-by-piece 
at the breaking point
of each vulnerable finger’s wait.
Hung from the ends of 
I;
Held together in the middle,
by the hollowed racks.
 
So what? —
Have you ever felt them as warmed bone, turning to meat
   still begging back 
its flesh from
inside her?
 
So what? —
Asleep, again, with arms and legs and
hair that grows along
the constant horizon line—or
the shadowy walk in the near morning. 
Balsam firs of her long, left thigh.
 
So what? —
Have you ever seen her same legs
turning single, fine hairs of a feather
to both glorious wings
cut-flight!
as tiny hairs erecting 
in unison attention
in rows that marched, still, 
in straight rows down her legs
 
while waving recklessly, those 20,000
white flags of surrender.
 
So what? —
As her legs became longer lands 
twenty thousand bumps detonating as each mine cut open
another down-feathered pillow. 
That up close to a tired cheek, softness unforgave.
 
So what? —
I could not help but touch her, anyway.
 
Fingertips of my once faceless palm—
laid wet, dismembered: those sorry suckers.
 
Mistaken themselves for the work it takes
to hold a still-born nerve, 1 billion years dead
as if shaking the life into its new-born body
in the palms of willing hands.
 
So what? —
She still looked like freedom 
with a face
sauntering with direction, on her land that is 
all land now.
 
So what? —
The skin met the fingertips
my left palm, dumb faceless widow
lost and blind
looking for itself again
amongst her thighs—
 
the constant horizon line, along twenty thousand mountains that were always mountains
—still, 
she needed only to pretend were mountains. 
 
So what? —
So what? —
 
In a cabin, between the ends of the earth—I bury in her:
The period as the final point of the last, longest line.
The long, long, long horizon line.
The long hand of time:   ticking-stopped.
The fingers belonging to the palms, again, of a faceless clock.
The left hand gesturing the first fire here made by the first hands—
I sit almost frozen.
 
So what? —
Have you ever held your body over
hers like this? half-hungry, half-cold
half-burning just to feed her. 
 
I thought I saw her once, 
in between the dark wood.
These lands of no one else. 
 
Sitting in the dusk like an only tree—
of thousands more,
all leg, body, neck—
goose-bumped 
and face melted off.