Notes About The Poem
Autoscopic phenomenology refers to the lived, first-person experience of perceiving oneself from an external vantage point while still remaining fully embodied and aware internally.
Morning Breaks On Dragon Skin
I sit on the tiles
and breathe.
Slow.
Quiet.
Trying to be small enough
for the morning to hold me.
The water spills,
slides into the grout,
and rises somewhere else —
like the world is leaking
through its own seams.
And then I see it.
A shadow.
A shape.
A second skin
coming home.
She sits on the tiles,
breathing slow,
in and out,
a quiet meditation in the morning hush.
Her glass of water tips,
spills across the floor —
she watches it seep into the grout,
then rise back out
onto a tile twelve inches away.
How is this possible?
She blinks,
leans closer,
and that’s when she sees it —
a shadow sliding across the tile,
fast, deliberate,
alive.
She reaches out,
but anger slips away,
too old to hold,
too quick to name.
It’s the second skin,
the one she never meant to lose,
the one they called unholy
when it was only bruised.
It crawled back home,
right into her kitchen,
and she finally sees
the fire she’s been living with.
It’s the second skin —
and she’s done running from it.
It moves under the table like a storm,
black-ink muscle,
heat-born,
eyes bright with centuries of women’s rage —
the kind the world called wicked,
the kind they exiled to a distant moon.
She stands barefoot, trembling,
watching it breathe,
watching it circle,
watching it remember
everything she tried to forget.
She tries again,
but it darts beneath the table,
a truth too raw
to catch with hands.
It’s the second skin,
the one she never meant to lose,
the one they called unholy
when it was only bruised.
It crawled back home,
right into her kitchen,
and she finally sees
the fire she’s been living with.
It’s the second skin —
and she’s done running from it.
No scripture, no hymn,
no holy word could cage it.
It was never evil —
just ancient,
just human,
just hers.
The dragon lifts its head,
and something in her rises too —
a breath she’s held for years
finally breaking through.
She lets it move,
she lets it burn,
she lets herself become
everything she was told to unlearn.
It’s the second skin,
and she’s not giving it back —
the one that kept her fire
when the world turned cold and black.
It crawled back home,
right into her kitchen,
and she finally knows
the truth she’s been living with.
It’s the second skin —
and she rises with it.
A hiss in the silence,
a pulse under the ribs,
a shadow that settles
but never sleeps.
The tiles cool,
the water stills,
and the dragon waits —
patient, ancient,
part of her now.
Morning breaks,
but something older
breaks with it.
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