I have often wished to be reptile —
to shed skin from time to time.
No scars.
No scabs.
No nightmares dragging me awake at 3 AM.
No shadows of bygone pasts
crawling up my spine like a lust-sick leech.
Being human has never been convenient —
we grow skin back,
but never heal.
I’ve bled more in my head than I ever have through skin.
My scar tissues have bled into pages
of pungent, desperate poetry.
But they haven’t healed.
How do you heal
what has no skin?
How do you nurse
what’s bare and exposed,
with no sheath,
no shell,
no place to hide behind?
How much poetry must one bleed
before bleeding out completely —
leaving behind
nothing
but the skin?
They tell me letting go is important.
You can let go of things you own.
But how do you let go
of what owns you?
How do you unlive
what’s already interred
in your blood and bones?
How do you let go of twenty years
without losing a lifetime?
How do you hold fort against abuse
more permanent than your teeth?
They tell me I should learn to forgive.
You can forgive people.
Not breathing demi-gods
wearing the flesh of humans.
How do you forgive
when there is no one asking?
When their egos are thicker
than the blood you both share?
They say I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.
That I shouldn’t keep doing this to myself.
As if all this
were a choice.
Do you think I unwrapped
this trauma like a birthday gift?
Do you think I invited abuse,
abandonment,
and an ever-thickening worthlessness
into my life
for the poetry?
Do you think I bleed
day after day
night after night
because I’m allergic to band-aids?
I’ve grown up
to a religious woman’s prayers —
not for my health and prosperity,
but for my death.
To a man of science
who cut me open
with scalpels carved of legacies,
bruising me
like I was his latest
failed experiment.
I’ve grown up
to a mother’s regret
for birthing me.
To a father’s contempt
because I failed to be the life
he pre-conceived.
I’ve grown up
being told
I’d never measure up
to the family name.
That I’d only ever be
a filthy aftertaste, at best.
An existential glitch.
A psychological aberration.
An utter waste
of privileged parenting.
And yet —
I could never do it.
I could never fully shed skin.
But I shed
the family name.
And some nights
I still wonder
if skin ever belonged to me
or if it was just another name
they had etched on my bones.
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