Hildetann

I. I was born when you were born, skin to skin – embraced you like a long lost friend – stayed – with you, born with the brown skin of an old woman, thin and translucent to the touch, became a second skin for you, a little taller, my feet stifled underneath yours, became for you a cradle against everywhere your skin was. II. You know there is a ghost outside your skin, leaning on your shoulder. Fingers on your ribs. All your light is for it. It keeps your dark, too, makes the you in earlier photographs a darker-skinned, unknowable, silent body – do any ghosts know their bodies? Is this how the flame feels w