What of me is
I, I sigh
when I discard
the latest self-load
from my car
onto the road,
another lifted, loathed
piece of what used to be
part of my left knee
that I slid a fingernail under
while driving somewhere
because it bothered me,
like other places I think of
as part of me
I’d also separated from, one
chunk as large as a quarter,
a chunk of change,
although not silver
as in “silver scales,”
the psoriasis descriptor.
Is what peels off me
or not, I mutter
solipsistically,
remembering that quarter
and thinking now
of how
money, unlike bark or leaves,
won’t grow on trees
or on me,
and how ‘to be
or not to be’
is not my question,
mine being,
“Is what defies me
what defines me?”
Is the debris
from this perpetual
affliction barely different from
what normal people shed –
their hair, their hangnails,
the dust off their filed nails,
the biological detritus
of living, the particles left
when we’re dead,
our possible souls
psoriasis free?
I’m vexed,
by not knowing
whether what departs
was really what I was, and
perplexed
at not predicting, much less
preventing, what wants to leave next,
what new Sisyphean section
of normal-looking skin
will soon flare neon
in an eruption
of immunological rebellion,
spotted parts a-peel again,
the overactive warrior cells
of me or not me,
I sigh
in repetitious self-inquiry.
*****
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