Orion

I strip my skin to step outside
before dissolving into sky.
Like some unlucky hunter seeking a glimpse of heavenly flesh,
I am rent by my hounds.
Memory, Empathy and Reason
snap at my sinew and I stumble.
Reason crushes my chest.
Empathy shakes my skull.
Memory's black maw closes around my throat.
Before I am silenced, I submit.
My skin sloughs off and muscles melt.
Bone blows away as dust.
I am alight on the wind like pages freed of their leather bindings.
All that was written is now released
and I am left alone with enormous space.
There is floating and shadowlight,
a gaping mouth and an impossible gaze,
and whirling
like a child's spirals,
or the taste of tail to the dog,
or a camera recording its reflection in the monitor's glass.
A cleansing blankness suffuses before I belt back in
and say goodnight to the stars.