Birthday present

Summer-born

Flesh born under a surgeon’s knife, soul borne by gusts
from a summer thunderstorm, bruised sky roiling as self
folds down from Self like origami from sheets – of rain,
of the leaves of all books written and not yet written falling
like me into spine-stiff casing as I was bound from dream
to womb to air crackling with ether and ozone, lightning
licking a gleaming alphabet onto my bloodstreaked skin,
unbound, unbounded, unfolded, unfolding from arc to arc
under the Perseids, following their spark back home.