You use your hands like your mother

The memory I can not place, can't finger with my beautiful

hands, a man once said, you use your hands

like your mother, took years to understand my hands used

to pick, pick on self, on skin--

musician I create silence, sensation

to the microscipic tune of picked raw

picked liquid-red.

My wife gloves me to break

me as though I were a horse unridden,

a child again-- the discomfort of clothes

scratched on skin till I can go on

without a body I've never liked

a barrier between me and my naked

touching of the world. He was right,

like your mother in that silent picking

way I've watched her pick off bites

till the scab and bleed, re-scab, re-bleed--

finger-dance she's done

without thought of pain (the held-note

she holds to in the background)

those days sky is wholey grey--

grey, coupled with Silence that bears,

presses out amplified Ache

she closes her eyes to

kick into a swallowing sky.