Skin Like Spilled Milk (p. 2)

Skin Like Spilled Milk
Dana Kunline

For a long time I wanted to have skin like spilled milk,
smooth, glassy, impenetrable by light,
worth weeping over.

I wanted hips like the shadows under a melon,
something soft you could curve your hand around,
that didn’t exist.

Hands like birds, with quick fluttering heartbeats, long lovely
feathers for fingers, fragile pretty bones,
nails like singing beaks.

But my skin isn’t mine to change. I can see through it when
I get out of the shower, hairs stand up,
my veins show through.
When in an airplane above the midwest,
they are the thin rivers you see.