Along the beach lie bodies
of the finest grade of skin,
the surfers following a far-

flung deity. Yet the stranger
fauna looks back
at me from the hotel mirror.

My bed becomes a cage
of white birds, red throated.
The luggage of my child

holds a blackness I can’t reflect.
This life, cousin to an old
equator, rests in the vast

light, the untethered thing
volunteers my lungs
and limbs. The skin

I slip out of so that I may wear
another; so that I may
mourn an imaginary loss.

I fold my self and place it
in a suitcase
made of banana leaves.