I muck about in my ill-fitting skin.

I grind my jawbone into grit. 

I waft and I waver, and I wait and I wait. 

My scaly shoulders suffer in the thick air. 

It’s putrid, even rancid; every inhale burns. 

I can’t stay here. 

I make it halfway down the road,

I let out a chilling scream then, and turn around.

My sandpaper tongue probes the spaces between the dentin of my teeth.

I lick the sediment from my gums and I wait and I seethe. 

Oh, this alien skin. 

I grimace, spitting out sawdust remnants. 

The first scale has sloughed off and hangs suspended halfway down my back. 

I am reptilian. I am panicking, and wishing for the grace that I lack. 

A quick glance around, but I no longer care who sees. 

I unzip this human suit, step out. 

No, I step in. To myself. To me.