Have you ever seen a gecko on a tree branch?
It looks exactly like a twig or a dead leaf.

What about a fingernail-sized sand crab burrowing
backward, or a diamondback rattlesnake

on the trail just ahead of you, almost perfectly
concealed from swooping eagles.

You have to look carefully or you will
miss them. Which is of course the whole point.

I was a master at it like the Great Horned Owl
or the Mossy Frog, blending

into the background with bulky sweatshirts
and baggy pants, hiding thinning hair

with hats, using gobs of makeup
to mask hollow cheeks,

telling friends I had already eaten or I was going
to the gym or was upset Seth didn’t call.

Watching with pride the pounds slip away.
A private ritual to prove my body

belonged to me not to a meddling
mother or a fault-finding father or an uncle

with wandering hands. But unlike the Arctic Fox
or the three-toed sloth

what I really wanted was to be seen
by a world that I didn’t want to know.