The Whereabouts of Wherever

My palms have not seen them.

I interrogated random freckles, but they, too,
      did not know to which corners of
                                    which parts they had retreated.
  
I considered harsher treatment with a vein.
I thought of daring it to keep its blue in the face of O,
     but my blood is already so like a burden.  So with pity,
        I only asked - but in vain.

The newest scars, the oldest bruises- they know nothing
of time or direction; they are only waiting to lose their

   texture and their pain-to-the-touch, to
become white again
            such as the rest of the flesh.

Consulting my eyes seemed the most choice idea,
    but they only told the most fantastic stories of
              things seen when they were
       not open.

My immune system must have seen them pass along the ways-

it had to have been witness to the great migration of font
    or foreign shining bodies-

but the cells, the protein could not be removed from battle
for questioning.

I did not bother with my tongue.
I know it to be too self-involved to notice much of anything.

I checked again with my palms- but still nothing.

When I am done with working my body over,
                I know I will not find the places
that words have hidden

when I have made my bones a terrible tomb of a home,
when I have turned syllable against syllable, when I have
              used punctuation as a means

    of separation.

But my palms and I- rivets and all- man a post daily.
We wait for words to come from their wherevers, from the property
     that they have been wise (and artful) in keeping from me.

We wait while I prepare promises about never-agains and kinder
        marrow. We wait with the preface of “but this time” and appendixes
    that have a function.