revelation – Words and Feathers

ancestor under the skin (20170226)

storing oxygen
in a pair of secondary organs
while swimming through my blood

it pulled itself forward on flippers
rough-hewn legs too slow
to evade an apex predator

but then
it broke through my skin
and had the new world to itself

we removed our skins
and thought we would see
our true selves

but without our skins
we were invisible to
each other

either what was inside
was too hard too see

or nothing held up our skins
except an effort of will