A Different Woman
Christine A. MacKenzie
I want to peel off the trees like white birch bark
some romanticized splitting of wood or darkened into the folded
litterfall that must be silver if you keep digging with your fingernails
deep into the earth so that he’ll never find me
not even in my mind never find me all curled up
and rotten in the woods like the rest of the women
who shivered from his touch my skin is so white in the sun
I want to peel it all off so he can’t touch it
because even now I can smell him rise up from under the leaves
his voice when I step over them
and his smile’s wrinkles in bark and I know I’m alone but not alone
because the clouds laugh at me mock me
and shower me with water that reddens in my fists
he’s still there in my body in my mind some parasitic worm
that’s taken up shop in the soft curls of my brain or intestines
I wish an ax could chop him off an infected branch
but he’s shed me off in too many pieces to separate with a single swing
because of him a dark rush of a different blood runs through my veins
I want to be different than what I’ve become some neutral green that breathes