The Girl with Two Sets of Skin

the girl with two sets of skin has lived since before before they say. they say ‘old soul’. they say she walked out the womb. born standin up. an’ ever since she been beastly. been big and sweating and bleeding from her cheeks. her eyes ain’t even aligned right i heard. i heard right. seen it for myself. one don’t work at all, you see. it just rolls ‘round in her head like a piece of a memory.

i heard she devoured her childhood home. kitchen sink an’ all. father gutted himself over that sink. mother later ran from the wreckage. you’d think her kin invented loneliness the way they caved. and the girl with two sets of skin? she blacked. pushed the whole thing down her throat and no one suspected she was bearing anything in her chest heavier than her own ugly.

she rarely moved after that. surrendered to a few small gods eventually. which caused her to crackcrack into pieces. she grew this kaleidoscope mouth that could hold more voices than she had rolls of flesh. morphed. morbid. like day into night. shed her selves in broad daylight. ‘we all do it’ she’d say. she’d say she was no different from you. that she, in fact, is you. and that’s what’s most remarkable about the girl with two sets of skin.