Skin remembers how long the years grow
when skin is not touched, a gray tunnel
of singleness, feather lost from the tail
of a bird, swirling onto a step,
swept away by someone who never saw
it was a feather. Skin ate, walked,
slept by itself, knew how to raise a
see-you-later hand. But skin felt
it was never seen, never known as
a land on the map, nose like a city,
hip like a city, gleaming dome of the mosque
and the hundred corridors of cinnamon and rope.
Skin had hope, that's what skin does.
Heals over the scarred place, makes a road.
Love means you breathe in two countries.
And skin remembers--silk, spiny grass,
deep in the pocket that is skin's secret own.
Even now, when skin is not alone,
it remembers being alone and thanks something larger
that there are travelers, that people go places
larger than themselves.

My analysis

This poem is about the two countries that Nye represents being both Palistanian and American. She is using the word skin to describe herself, what people see when they look at her. People see her skin eating and walking and taking part of the every day activities but no one actually knows what is going on behind her skin. When you look at her you see a regular lady not knowing who she really is just as people brush feathers away without taking the time to really find out what it is.

People may see skin do these things but "skin felt it was never seen". She was never seen for who she really was, a Palastanian American but she was just seen by her skin. Nye believed that this skin that was only seen by the ignorant eye had hope. That her skin can not only cover up whatever is going on inside like healing over the "scarred places" but skin can breathe hope that it will one day be recognized for what it really is.

In the end of the peom Nye writes about how behind the skin is a secret. Skin holds memories of her heritage, of her culture, and of who she really is. Skin also thanks the people who took time to explore and to accept these other cultures. Without the people who travel to far places, who accept other cultures and places, she would not have been created and would not have been a mixture of two countries.