restoration project

What you are is
what you become by
peeling off the skin blistered
from standing too long in
someone else’s sun.
It’s turpentine dissolving,
a putty knife scraping
the paint you didn’t choose.
The wrong shades of the
wrong colors, too thick on
the skin. And it’s a cocooning,
a shedding, a dropping away–
as such metamorphoses
are; a leaving behind
of all that didn’t fit; a
walking out into the night.
Now take up the brush, and
choose your own palette,
then color yourself in the
blues and the grays—the
hues of your soul, with
moonlight in your eyes, the
gloaming on your cheeks, and
stars aligned down your back.
Go—fly away with
fresh painted wings,
your self at last
your own.

©stephanie pepper, 2020