The First Post: A Poem

Shed


My old skins, brittle honeycombs,
litter floors. They curl from my body,
leaving me slick and bare and too open

but I keep shedding. I’m afraid
my lover’s house has more of me than I do.
I circulate from room to room, pile up

in the vents. Four damn years,
scattered on his floor in careless heaps,
covered by crushed beer cans.

If I left I’d still be here, still crammed
in some drawer, between light bulbs
and stale cigarettes. I’d be flakes

on his pillow as he beds down with her,
inhaled before each shout, hovering
above them, sticking to his lungs.