You ask what it feels like
to cut skin

and she answers as if
water is almost boiling—

                             oh, I have six hundred and three
                             scars, mostly beneath my clothes

and she rolls her sleeves to show maroon lines
that appear to be from a child’s coloring book
or a church’s stained glass window—

depicting a tale of a saintly woman
without a name

her flesh a headstone she was trying to etch
her own name into

                             something like that

she says matter-of-factly,
re-rolling sleeves & being normal again
until the next time she becomes naked
to someone