Out-of-Body Experience

Traveling in a foreign country, away
from your hometown, you remain

a stranger until you come to the first
door that opens and you are taken in. 

When they ask you to sit down
and have some food, a glass 

of water, that's when you think 
it might be possible to make a country 

out of your loneliness. As on a piece 
of indigo fabric: you can guide 

embroidery thread in cross- 
and running stitches over the spots 

time has mangled or torn. Did you talk 
to yourself, wandering in a new city 

where your name meant only the infinite 
anonymous? The story of how you arrived 

grows a few more pages. The signs 
point to the last place a bleating 

animal was flayed and quartered, its guts
festooned in trees to celebrate arrival 

or departure. Metallic blood-smell, 
a heap of discarded skin in the fire.