how do you react when one day, you wake up (literally) in the morning,
and you walk out from this membrane you’ve been entombed in while still living,
the closest you’ll ever come to reenacting the opening scene of that stage version of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein with
Eggs Benedict Cummerbundt and Johnny Lee Miller Jacob Jinglehiemer Schmidt.

you walk out of this mask you were born into,
slid into like a gunny sack that cinched over your head.
It grew with you like a hermit crab shell, fitting your form until you were old enough to notice and climb out
the mask was the survival, and then once your carapace matured you could stand on your own.

It’s not that you couldn’t get to know me. It’s just that I wasn’t quite

(myself yet)