Candy Shue
Under the Skin
The devil lives in the grain of her door. At night, she won’t shut it, for fear that he will not open the door again until morning. Your skin should be barrier enough, her uncle the doctor says. But she knows her skin is not enough, full of breaches, the itch a subterranean current running constantly; the scratch an autonomic response, beyond habit. The interior red showing, a place the devil could love. During the day, he sleeps. At night the devil skips from the wood that shapes his face as she lies trapped in bed. Your skin is the largest organ of the body, you should take care of it, Uncle says, slathering her with sticky cream, not her mother’s shimmery lotions that come in ornate pink bottles with golden lids. Pinching and crying does not work. Mother delivers her, Uncle attaches the mask, makes her inhale a bitter mist. She coughs and curses her strangled breath. At night, the devil plays with the doorknob. Slap, slap, slap, slap. A wedge of light from the hall lamp pries open the darkness, falls onto the bedroom floor. She closes her eyes, wills herself to become shadow. There is no hiding; the devil lives in between. With the ceaseless itch that makes her hands the agents of her own excoriation, he swears: I am the only one who will ever touch you like this.
Choose
both. The tongue and the taste, the finger and the felt. The fret fired the wire and kept on going. Families share their talents, all talked out come morning. Humming, we are, we are. It’s in the air, isn’t it? Swallow wide and long with a little flip at the end. It shows in the eyes as a deeper blue, a deeper brown or green. The scent of cloves in your hand. How many bodies do you have at once? Standing at the door at dawn, send them out to collect a shine. At night a shiny dark. To do everything means to know very little, says the clockmaker with his timepiece dangling from his eyeglasses. I love his tiny hammer and nails, the way he wears a magnifier over his already magnified eyes. Let us sail out on the blue-green sea, with a hamper of apples and a dog named Lola. She will only bark at the flying fish as they wing through the air, unappeased by water alone. We will gather the light off the ocean, the particles and waves, neutrons and electrons, and take them home dispersed in vials made of air.