You are asking me to strip

and strip

and strip

and strip

and strip

away all the skins I have gathered

to protect me from this question

I'm fine sloughs away first, but

that layer was always intended to shed 

in daily battles, armed, with how are you todays

You are asking me to strip away

exoskeleton smiles, warrior braids and long words

(the kind that flop and defuse the question by tangling

the one who asked in unfunny and confusion), to claw at

the hardened layer

of number grades, letter labels, 

the one hundred and one personality tests laying who I am bare

(ISTP, you'd make a great embalmer, a fake wizarding house

2370, 3.98, 142

old soul in a young body)

You and I will have to dig through the carnage of who we thought I was, 

because I don't remember the shivering thing

I first wrapped a changeling pelt around.

My name, in Chinese

is a homophone for forgetting -- my teacher says to me with a straight face

it seems I've forgotten your name

while letting the two syllables slide off her tongue glibly. 

Maybe that's why, most days, I am

half-made beds and half-fulfilled intentions

dreaming at day of being asleep and dreaming at night of being awake

where are the other halves? you may ask, and I will respond

gone

vanished in the impossible point between

that universe and now, a place only 

the geometry of the heart and mind can find

So I can't go. 

I'll have to find my heart first.