When We Shed Our Old Skin and Grow More Beautiful Than Ever

It clung like ivy, patient, green with hunger — wrapped itself around every beam, crept beneath shingles, rooted in the cellar’s damp breath. I mistook it for the house itself — fed it rain, fed it dust, let it climb my windows and press its leaves to the glass until I could no longer see daylight. But rot loosens quietly. One morning the vines lay slack, detached in their own weight, as if my silence was permission for them to fall away. Now the walls breathe unchoked, bare brick catching sun like raw skin. Floorboards sing with sudden emptiness. The air is new — thin, sharp — a future echoing through cleared rooms. I walk barefoot through debris, lighter than I have ever been. For the first time I do not flinch at my own footsteps.