Skinned. (24/10/17)

Let me breathe a while.

Let me feel sanity without the burden of humanity tugging on my shoulders and hanging off the edge of my lips.

It's like how ink leaks from pen to paper;

With urgency, with purpose.

The late nights don't bug me,

Because there's just something about emptying a mind full of the grime and sorrows that plagued the day.

I'd stay awake all the same.

If it meant I kept these thoughts wriggling through my brain

In between squiggles of knowledge and truth-knots.

They say the eyes are windows to the soul

But I would rather consider them doors,

I don't like visitors, so mine are always closed.

Otherwise, they would see how my skin defines discomfort

They would see how I itch to release my inner being from it.

They would see the way it makes my lungs breathe in air I'm not yet accustomed to,

And exhale words I don't really mean, words I can't understand.

The skin opens, and it peels off easily.

When I'm lifted out, clothed in flesh, I'm free.

I've been released from the skin that tugged and protected me

From being me, inhuman.

And just a bit numb.

Everyone stares now, at the pink and grainy complexion.

It scares them, these beady eyes of mine,

That used to be complimented by lashes and little lids,

But now they stare aimlessly into the eyes of people who claimed to have known me once.

The human me.

She's gone now, passed on.

To some other kid who's got the burden of new skin.

Someday she'll want out, peel off the skin

She never learned to live within.

People will stare at her,

But she'll learn quickly,

And she'll be comfortable with being accustomed to inhumanity.

xx.

-nonni.