This Skin… 

A testament to loss.

A dichotomy of love, of failure, and change.  The visceral way a spoon scrapes the cooled film on top of tomato soup, my arms crease and fold the same.  

In this loose skin, the ghosts still remain.

This Body…

A testament to time.

In its fullness, never searched for home.  Deliriously playful and childlike in the way it was endlessly loved.  This body formed mountains, with soft ground and tall grass.  This body swayed.  This body served.  This body touched the sides of life.

But, did I over live?  Did I stretch my body thin?  Was it tradition?  Was it the indulgence of my youth?

Could I hold this body together?

This Loss…

A testament to impermanence.

Now deflated and hollowed and partially disembodied.

Do I only love half my flesh?  Should I only care for the parts that stayed strong?  While these soft mountains turn to crags.  The tall grass, now lichens clinging to rocks.  Muscle, swelling like an ocean.  Do I still live in the seasons of this body?

Is it natural?

This Pain…

A testament to transcendence.

This pain is important.  How I succumb to it and how I move in it.

Is truth always serenaded by change?

I have no traditions to pass, only legacy, and in time,  it will transcend this plane too.

Can I find myself in the ripples?  Can I accept these gifts of loss?

Can I enjoy the view?

This New Skin…

A testament to home.

The only home I have.  The home that’s carried my largeness and my smallness.  This haunted skin, I’ve never seen before, yet every inch, still memorized.  Loose memories of the past.  This sack that still holds all of the beauty and all of the darkness that is me.  These jetting crags.  These waterfalls of skin.  Loose cascades of skin.  This beautiful time capsule of love and tragedy and reshaping.

It lives in the folds.  It endures.

In This Loose Skin,

All the stories of my life.  Some of these stories are ending… and some are just beginning.

Still… It holds all the yesses of tomorrow.