My body's a nomad.  Even skin

is a burden.  They say the uterus

can journey along the limbs,

the train-track nerves, hide

in the space between functions.

I am a nineteenth-century girl,

at home with hysterics.

Want to pack up the baked-brick

bones, rearrange the neural

furniture.  Something holds

out its arms, demands up

in the long cells of the muscles;

a traveler in the vessels, always

one beat ahead of the blood.

Not even a scar can stick.  Ink

runs, pierced holes close.

The terrain of my body swallows

signposts, refuses to specialize.

Once my heart leapt into my throat

but even that didn't last.