Once reborn, I emerge hungry

Humiliated by fate

By the murky shadow my intuition casts

I am blinded by this yearly birth

crawling my way into this world of brightness and perception

Like a puppy teething

Lost and indulgent,

I gnaw through the brambles with mouth agape

Stopping in every alleyway to witness my fresh and swollen face in the cracked mirrors

Kneeling on the cobblestones

Watching the sewer water snake its form past me,

And drooling in astonishment

For jealousy of its unity.

This corporeality like stained glass,

some kind of soldered magic binds me

but I do not match

Nativity welcomes the fragile and contorted 

Letting sunlight sift through the thin layers of my skin in shades of ruby and emerald

And my bones become magnetic against every locked fence, yearning to find a dishonest space to inhabit

I imagine sunburnt doves

and motionless rivers

just to feel that familiar strangeness of the past again.