Shucked

Every day of my life I have woken and left a silvery shell of skin draped over my bed. The light that peeks through the curtains catches the swirls and whorls as they lie there, the perfect cast of my shoulders, my hips. The slightest breeze will cause it to break into dust, but for a moment I can stand there and be proud of what I leave behind, a dream.

When I was a child, my older sister would pinch the skin with her forefinger and thumb, gently peeling the dead pieces and easing them away from the newborn pink underneath. Then she would bundle me in the bath to scrub away the rest, a fresh towel waiting to wrap around me like a hug. While I stepped into my uniform, she would shake the bedsheets out of the window into the back garden, snowflakes falling through the air. She carefully vacuumed up any particle of me that remained while I sat at the kitchen table waiting for the toaster to pop. 

When I was ten years old and she was moving out, she taught me how to creep into the shower at dawn, how to bathe in cold water so it didn’t set the boiler moaning and wake my step-father. She taught me how to tiptoe.

My sister never shed her skin; I don’t know who taught her to care for me like she did.

Eighteen and it’s my turn to leave the house with the old boiler. I toss and turn in an unfamiliar bed with unfamiliar voices booming through the walls. I wake to the coldness of sweat and bedsheets on the floor and the room swirling thick with fog. I had left the window open to deal with the intense heat of a September that clutched the sun close, and now in the confusion my body is floating up around me, skin shattered into dust. I don’t have a vacuum so I wrap my hand in sticky tape and swipe it over the floor where the dust settles, making half-moon arcs in the snow.

I find that I can never get all of my dust out of that tiny room. It sucks it all in and won’t relinquish. I am on the skirting boards, in the cracks of the window, inside the storage heater and causing a burning smell. I will be inside this room long after I have left.

When I wake, alone in my single bed, I smooth my movements, sliding out of bed inch by inch. I look down at my creation, proof of another day and night I have lived and left behind, and I indulge myself in the feeling of pride. I tear off a piece of dry silver that lingers on my right shoulder blade and let it melt on my tongue. Then I smash the whole thing to pieces and watch the dust buzz around me, getting in my eyes.