Second Skin
Made from the fabric of stolen fears,
stitched from tales I shouldn’t have believed,
love slithers on like a second skin—
It molds to my shape,
presses where I’m softest,
tightens when I breathe too deep
It leaves fingerprints beneath my ribs
and calls it embrace
It doesn’t hug. It holds.
It tightens with time
It remembers how I bled
the first time it fit just right
I feel it in the seams of my thoughts,
how it hums when I lie still,
how it sharpens when I think of leaving
It remembers every name I’ve tried to forget.
I tried to take it off once—
peeled it slow,
like burned fabric from skin.
It laughed.
You don’t take off what you’ve grown into
And still—
I reach for it.
Because nothing else
has ever fit me this well
— n.a., Almost Light
