Shedding Skins

Shedding skins

Have I lost

the ability to shed old skins?

Am I turning into

A human size bunion?

Ossified into one

Solid something instead

Of the peelable onion

I used to be?

Is this a sad

Development or indeed

The very state of integrity

I used to yearn for?

Is it that my senses

Have turned numb

So I do not notice

The foreignness of the land?

Or has my belonging

Inside my own skin

Become so strong

That no land is really

Foreign anymore?

Never had I thought

There would be a time

When I would find myself

Yearning for that feeling

Of being lost that used

To haunt my days.

Maybe it has become

Some kind of shorthand

For the youthfulness I

Occasionally

Wish I could revisit.

Yet the silence here

Is so deep and huge

It has swallowed even

The noise that used

To inhabit my head