Skin

Write an essay about my skin peeling from a sunburn. How my skin isn't even red anymore. The skin comes off in big pieces from the middle of my chest. When I peel around the edges, it sounds like paper ripping. It's clear, nothing like my skin. But it annoys me how alike it is to plastic wrap. It doesn't stay flat and stretched. It sticks together, and I can't pull it back. It ends up in a ball. It almost melts together and then turns a grayish brown from the dirt on my fingers. It's impolite to peel in public. I didn't know that. But what happens when you first find out your peeling, and you happen to be in public? Do you just ignore the white flakes of skin trying to escape your flesh, or do you take them off?

My friend told me I should stop what I was doing and do it in the privacy of my own home. I am at home now, in my bed. So I do it, peel, if I want to. In private. Where no one can see my taking off an outer layer of skin that doesn't want to be there anymore. I feel like a snake. But snakes get to keep the fallen skin. Their old skin still looks like them. It holds their shape. My skin doesn't. Bits and pieces come off one by one. And once they do, they don't even look like skin anymore. They don't even look like me anymore.

My old skin doesn't even slightly resemble my new skin or even my underneath skin. As the old skin falls away, I don't know where it goes. They disappear into the carpet. To be collected into the thing we call dust. Isn’t that where old skin goes? To the dust? Where we touch it and breathe it in. And it returns to us in some other form. I happen to be allergic to dust. My body rejects it. My eyes get all irritated and itchy. And it bothers the hell outta me. I don't like dust. I try to be as far away from it as I can. But does that mean I try to be as far away from old me as I can. The leftover parts. The parts I have shed away?