She stepped off of a cameo carved into a mirror.

I watched her undress with the light of the moon
painting stripes on her skin as it fell through
the slats in the blinds like
dust motes.

She started at her shoulders,
digging fingers beneath her collar bone,
slitting flesh along the bone-line, folding it down
like the collar of a dress,
wet to her chest.

Her arms bent behind her neck,
grasping the vertebra, pulling
down to unzip her spine
all the way to the small of her back, letting
the bones fall to the floor with a clatter
like windows in a storm,
just about to break.

She dragged the skin and muscle from her legs like stockings
without garters, exposing the knobs of knock-knees
while stripping away the scars
of bike crashes and road rash.
She lifted her feet from heels 
sharper than the edges of her
broken ankles and bruised pride.

She pulled the ribbon from her hair
and it tumbled down to tangle
at the inside of her ribcage,
knotting in the backs of her lungs.
Her breath became a whisper and a
guess, passing through blood-red
lipstick meant to seduce.

She came to me in the dark-light-dark
of the moonlight in my bedroom, all the layers
stripped away, begging me to love her
from the crown of her head to the bones
she worked so hard to expose,
and I could tell in her eyes she was hoping I'd say
no, your bones are not enough.
Show me more.