your name

your name is enough to send me spiraling;
when i hear it my flesh falls in helical ringlets
about my feet like brown sweet potato skins,
unraveling to expose my sinewy interior.

raw, pink, scratched by the prickly syllables
of your appellation, it is a reflection of
the affliction your name has come to mean
to me, a lurching of my body, an unwinding of 
my will.