Soul Fillet

I study the fingerprints as a profession. Nothing so calculating as an FBI analyst, but as blueprints of the soul. They form in the first weeks of life, womb-side. Never change. Scrape them, scar them, liquify them, they come back screaming the same things. Healer. Artist. Professional Victim.

Enlightenment scored on flesh for all time. Every secret on display for a reader to interpret. Entire swathes of you laid bare, ready for the curtain to go up and reveal your naked truths. It rolls on.

I knew the body had to have a secret legend. There, one day, on the edge of the world, looking at my hands, muttering, "I know the answer is here somewhere." Can't look away, won't. These endless lines, a play dissected and flung across flesh, daring me to reassemble them into an arc without breaks.

Holy, sweet, selfish skin, self-perpetuating feedback loop that amnesia cleverly disguised. This endless landscape of freedom to become, to remember and give thanks for all the wisdom, misery, loneliness and compassion living beneath the lines.

These tiny worlds, whorls and galaxies spinning out from extremity to extremity, all the way to toes, which have them too. They have them too.