I impersonate a body

              By becoming body itself;

An assembly of mangrove
                            Limbs that even the fog

Could not conceal, a hand deciphering
Where foliage ends

              And skin begins. An aorta
Of branches convinces me I am still

              Somewhere—Life
In between cracks of conscience.

              A ghost in muscles of lichen and weeds,

                            All facsimile. Life nonetheless.
How would you feel If you found out 
              You were mere protozoa

Fantasy—a eukaryote plucked from dream
              And desire. What Adam took

From the garden I became. He failed

                                        To realize I wanted him more — 
To be permissible. I make conversation with roots and vines

              To disappear my conversion of root and vine.
My face is a cocoon and underneath it

              Was not another face,              but a prayer
              Or negotiation. My pleas turned elegy.

                            I envied caterpillars for what comes after.
              Instead of genesis, I was autopsy.

                            Not mine but I inherited his pain
              And claimed his want. I knew

                                                  the world
              Before I knew the word for it.