Here on this dock, halfway there,
I watch as his slaves work along the water’s edge
and as she does not.

She is one of them, or shall I say was.

Skin dark and glazed,
her stomach is swelling from her white laced cotton dress,
her stomach is trying to rip the seams.

I wonder what this man has done,
why he chose her off-cream innocence
instead of an air-bleached white?

I see her reflection in his smiling eyes, while she
walks in a dancing way,
feet following a path of lovely notes
that he has written.

I watch as Anna’s silhouette unstitches
each cotton pattern, recreating,
following the hems never before sewn.

I took your advice and left my flesh at home. I greet you at your doorstep, where you too undress yourself of your skin. You tell me that is okay for us to be like this, as you wipe each ligament from your body. We become but two skeletons in your living room, our bones white with relief. We dance, our bones clacking together, the only noise I can hear while you examine the truths in my skeletal structure. And I have never felt so pretty. But I know that even so, I must eventually go home to my flesh.

I watch the fish tank located to the left of me.
I am not too familiar with the fish, and they are not too familiar with me,
but I can feel them swimming through my veins,
stimulating each ligament,
vibrating every bone.
They scatter in each direction.
They startle,
with no definite destination.
Suddenly--
they rush towards
my legs--
dumbfounded,
few linger in my gut to explore a sunken ship.
The rest pile into the nooks of my calves,
caverns of my knees,
trenches of my toes.
These tingling tensions tempt me.

My feet flutter across the floor,
a captured fish set free.