SKIN
They say it was all for a woman's face:
For the blood of a mirror, swanned with flesh
(How fitting, then, that they won by a husk).
Why do we think there must be more to it
Than this? Does war require nobler cause?
See them now, as they pour from the veil's rip,
Into the zone of victors; and as though
To demarcate, cut throats: all in homage
To skin, to the boundary they have just left,
And which of course they haven't really left.
We think we're deeper but we are the same.
We wait in disguised fortresses for night,
When we can creep forth and touch skin to skin:
Like dragons who spread fire and soar away,
Leaving behind them a map of the world.