i used to shed time like skin, pressing the husks into journals like dried flowers, my folded limbs chafing against the walls of a contracting cocoon.

in fairness, how else is there to know oneself other than
to annihilate oneself, over and over, dying to be reborn,
each time so sure of the image of the soul, in spite of seeing only strangers in self-portraits?

i tire of becoming.

combing my life for unchanging strands amounts to
coaxing a self out of me. surely continuity will uncover
some essential form? imagine! how sweet to step in the same
river twice; how soft the rippling face of my own reflection.

i return to the house where larvae squirm in the carpets and i sleep with the lights on. the house can see that i’ve become a different beast than it is used to.

no longer orchestrating revelations, these days i’m meeting
my own eyes in the mirror.

you see? i require no reinvention.