—after Ovid It wasn’t a laurel tree I turned into, but an acupuncturist with an inked-in woodlouse on her arm. A memento of my childhood on the edge of summer, those suburban woods where my sister and I poked roly polies with oak twigs, watched the bugs writhe into silver spheres. Like desire to its object—needle to its channel in the skin. With each one sunken in, I can touch a lung, a liver, a gall bladder, a heart. I can start the thrum of blood rushing up like history. I brush a stray hair from my eye as you lie on the table. As I raise my hand to my face my creased elbow releases its wrinkles, goes smooth and makes the roly poly unfold, reveal its whole shape.