I thought you were making me

when you set bones in my skin,

carved each from ash

and cherry wood, and with a pitted pen knife

scratched your initials on my ulna. Eyes open,

you said but I didn't have them yet.

You took wave-worn chips of abalone,

fit them under my eyelids. Breathe, you said

and Walk and Kiss me there. But

you made my nervous system

from a creeping vine

prone to wander, and with your

grandmother's music box lodged

in my throat, I waltzed away.

I've been walking now for years. I have

a perfect map of Paris tattooed

on the sole of my left foot.

I wrote your name on a curl of paper and burned it

where Caesar fell. I traded my eyes

to a man with a voice like an oil-slick;

the hand you sculpted shattered

one wild night in Venice.

I'm made mostly of copper

and scrimshaw now, but the letters you carved

still wake me up at night.

I remember the address,

wonder if the pipe is still dripping

like a tinny heart. I think

of the things

I will tell you.

But the girl who answers the door

does not know you.

She knew a man with your face, and the books

he read to her, and the chair losing stuffing

where he sighed in the evening.

Here, she says, Here, guiding me,

another hand you made in mine.

I have thought of making you again. I would begin

with a blackbird's feathers after the rain

but I remember most of all

the knife in your hand

and I cannot find the rasp

of the blade on wood

nor would I know where to put it—

in the hand or chest or under the tongue.

Tonight I slit the seams you made;

the wood was worn,

initials smoothed away.