ARTEMIS

new home

growing up feels so much more awkward than i'd imagined it to be
feels like bones stretched too big for skin
favourite shoes shrinking
watching the girl you've been best friends with for eight years calling someone else hers
feels like the thump of collision between lungs and ribcage when you realise nothing quite fits right doesn't sit right in your gut the way it used to

now i know humans dont shed their skin like snakes so i dont know what that feels like but i imagine it's something like

a bagful of my old clothes my favourite clothes in my mothers hands leaving my home
my home my childhood home leaving me
it's empty now of the rack of antiques and thatha's gramophone and all his bookshelves and his typewriter that stopped working decades ago but we kept under the bed anyway and no one calls the tv room the tv room anymore and

growing up feels too much like letting go and i hate every inch
but it also feels like drowning in the realisation that a home isnt really a place and i hate the feeling
of bones too big for skin

maybe if i could be a little snake
slinking along shedding my skin sometimes reinventing myself while still mostly staying the same a home at the base of a tree but mostly in my own head

but im stuck in my own skin that i cant shed with my big bones and a head that feels less like a home and more like a cheap rented apartment my landlord's going kick me out of anyday soon

and i cant wait
to have a home of my own

-alternatively;
snakes are hella cool
and i really want to be one