I shed the shell I wore so long, its edges frayed, its corners wrong. Each layer peeled, a whispered cry,
A part of me I could not tie.
The mirror shows a hollow trace, a stranger’s eyes, a vanished face.
The skin that held my shame and fear lies crumpled now, nowhere near.
I touched the folds, the faded lines,
The scars that marked these borrowed times.
They tell of battles lost and won, of nights endured, of rising sun.
Yet in the space where skin once clung, a tender pulse begins to hum.
The pain remains, but so does grace, the hollow left a breathing place.
For what is shed can shape the soul, discarded flesh makes a fractured whole.
I walk reborn, though echoes sting, alive beneath the skin I bring.
