...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaWndei_UYw&ab_channel=Ont%27Sofa

.

.

I wonder,

.

Can a person, of their own accord,

Truly, manifest their own reinvention?

.

Can they,

. 

In those long hours at midnight -

That dual needle

Resting hand over hand -

Really, re-create themselves?

.

As if, 

.

In a cut-throat moment of metamorphosis,

In the balneotherapeutic ebb and flow

Of a late night, desperation pour, 

Find themselves transformed, 

Through the opus manifestation

.

Of an embryo, formed in bath water

And fertilized, via soak in transubstantiation; 

.

.

Can they find, 

That they -

.

As the still water, 

Tepid, lapping at the arthritic 

Ache of tendon, and of joint,

Of scar tissue, and knit bones, 

.

Of the screaming, shapeshifting

Of a new nervous system, amidst liquid creation -

.

Crawl forth from this, revitalization's womb,

From a salt-tank, its in lieu delivery from doom,

And roll onto the laminate tile,

.

Steaming, panting, teething, 

.

As a tiger cub, with wandering stripes,

As a reptile, deprived of skin,

As a spotted faun, 

As a down lamb;

.

.

As if they had

.

Breaking from the brittle calcium,

The axiom, of an eggshell,

And making for their first beach,

Their first breath

Beyond the bathroom tile

.

Only to wake 

.

Into the tide of theirs, 

Benign, dew infused in its next morning,

.

To find, as this fresh crustacean

Broken, from its exoskeleton,

.

That who they had been

In those nights before

Had inadvertently, shed itself 

.

Of sand, and brine and clay, 

Of rot, sepsis and decay,

.

And found, 

That in this new shape,

In these new colors,

These centerfold layers,

. 

That the old 

Had somehow,

Miraculously, 

Ostentatiously,

. 

Been washed of itself,

.

Away?

.

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Author's Note

(draft)