Onion

You shed like an onion, shrug off
layer after papery layer, the stack of cast
offs piling as you miniaturize, an illustration
of the balance of life, don’t put me
on a see saw you think to yourself, smile showing
as through a lampshade, a screen door, the one
that slammed in your face that night
under the moonlight on the porch, and you went
and peeled onions for the week, or
is this too easy? –
                     The truth is,
you were wearing too much. The truth is
you stripped off your clothes. Mosquitoes
found you in your nakedness, she did not.
She shut you out, screen door rattling the moths
smug in their carapaces. You didn’t know what
to feel. You walked home a peeled onion, raw.