a house is not a home

Between the neurons and dermis, disconnection grows

Because sometimes my skin feels foreign

a place I don’t know, borrowed clothing that doesn’t quite fit

A house is not a home

Is that how the saying goes?

Body is meat stretched over sinews and bone

Cells divide like anxious thoughts, without my permission

Fat warbles and bubbles beneath my skin

Greasy yellow butter that coats my meat

A machine of fluids and electricity no one gave me the manual for

Every morning, I wake to new betrayals

A twinge in my knee that wasn’t there yesterday

Bones creaking like old floorboards in a house I didn’t want to buy

Yet must maintain anyways despite its flaws

the plumbing breaks, the wiring shorts

Every night I lay this meat-prison down

Hoping it will still serve me at dawn

This meat-suit masquerade,

Epidermis stretched too tight

Over a framework I didn’t choose

And in this cage of calcium and collagen

Consciousness peers out of windows we call eyes

Wondering how long the warranty expires

On this hand-me-down anthology of ancestors

That still doesn’t seem to belong to me