Seeing and Being Seen

Those years I couldn't swallow
anything with the skin or stench

of a fowl, with the fur of fruit, 
with a salt-shell or pod. The juice 

of tomatoes wrecked the lining of my gut, 
the flush of their cheeks stippled a flat 

tattoo on my calves. The first time I met
the ghost of my own mortality, I cried into 

its knitted shawl. I know it was only 
practicing how to reconcile with itself, 

but my shaking has never stopped. Nor 
has my need to dress my sharpest fears

in finery while opening the door to lion and
lamb, letting them both sit and eat at my table.