exoskeleton

I craft myself an exoskeleton: thick skin, full of things,

Full of words, sometimes;

Of water, other times. Of distance, mostly:

I am not here, I tell myself, so it doesn’t matter. I am not here.

I am delineated, segmented, like an ant, like a cockroach: I don’t remember the biology.

But I am sliced into pieces: body and geography, but I am delineated,

So it doesn’t matter, it isn’t me, it’s something else, somewhere else.

I am not here. It’s all right. It doesn’t matter.

I am not here.

Except, I am full of cracks, full of chinks in my skin,

The armor that’s kept me alive this long, and things get inside it,

Insidious things, and I am always wrong. I am not good at this.

Things seep in: they always do, through the cracks, through the chitin,

And I envy arthropods, crustaceans: their better evolution.

I could live in water, and briefly, and it wouldn’t matter.

So I make myself this exoskeleton, slowly, like an ant hauling food.

And write things, and don’t talk, and talk too much.

I don’t remember the biology but my body is fragmented, pieces strewn.

But it doesn’t matter: that was just inside. My exoskeleton is cracked and failing,

Full of water, full of things, full of distance: it doesn’t matter, it’s around me,

And I am not here, not here, not here.