Fragile as a beetle’s wing
Emily Baker
I have no idea where my armor ends
and my skin begins because
my world is a wound I must encase in chitin
while my soul beneath yearns
for simple touch, a brushing of fingertips
over my bruised heart.
Some people have walls,
but I have an exoskeleton; I inhabit
a terror that breaking it will break me too.
The illusion of safety, but bugs
can still be stepped on.
Emily Baker is a student and writer from East Tennessee who is good at baking and less good at keeping plants alive. She specializes in poetry and short fiction, but just loves the art of a good story in any form. She wants to cultivate a lifelong love of learning in herself and others, for all manner of things from history to woodworking to languages. She believes we live in a fascinating world and wants to know and experience it as deeply as possible.
