Throwing off my skin for selves I quickly hate,
I have shunned all compromise and commitment
and all good fellowship, my life is time spent
in fugue from blessed time, I write around my fate.

In a new port I promptly pursue escape
in the frigid sea of failure, salty and fierce,
but then I’m saved, with scant breath and frozen tears,
by some project’s fresh embrace, warm eyes, and dry cape.

By now very sick of the feel of foreign threads
choking my sense of duty in my chest and throat,
and also tired of fake routines learned by rote,
I am desperate to forge a pathway that spreads
the open sea before me, inviting me to float
in my own flayed skin, my most seaworthy boat.