This—body mine

My fingers trace over my stomach, up my chest, down my legs I am made of soft fluff and nerves. A creature of sensation, if you will My skin knows tough, craves touch, like my body craves water. I know my body like no one else, its pain and pleasure, its need and desire

I desperately wish I do not. Have you ever fallen, grazed your skin, bled into dirt or concrete? Afterr the lighning bolt of pain and the days of war inside your body, were you left with a scar? There is a numbness to scar tissue that I long to know Fill me with novocain plunge me in an ice bath do anything to stop my nerve endings

Detach me from this shore of sensation Free me—from this shell I know intimately that is not mine I breathe with a stranger's lungs I speak with a stranger's voice Who am I touching, when I caress my skinn? I could love them, I am sure I could love this body of mine, were it never mine at all