For Want of a Soul

seeking detachment from the futile corporeal,
the truth of myself beyond simple form.
I detach at the ankle the feet that
  shuffle nervously in subtle tap
    routines learned when I was 8
Discard the hair that
  my friend clippered down outside her apartment back
    when I was too scared to go to a barber
File down the bones of the knees
  I once balanced my four-month-old nephew on
    while he tried to keep time with my swaying to music

Hands, bloodied now are slipping on futile, distracting organs as I
Scoop out my stomach and
  all the butterflies it has ever held,
    crumpled now and lost in viscera
Admire one last time my shoulders,
  I always enjoyed how they looked in
    a tank-top, or binder, or embrace

And exhausted allow my arms to drop themselves from their sockets and fall away
Shut my eyes, grandma Eda's eyes, and swallow them down to block out the lying light

Turn my face away, inverting fully to behold my soul
and I find nothing left