Clothed with Skin: A Poem on Fragility of the Self | Thursday Verse No. 12

All our lives, we clothe ourselves in certainty, pride, and the soft comfort of conviction. Yet there comes a time when those garments begin to wear thin. What do we do in such moments? 

  'Clothed with Skin' is a quiet meditation on what remains when the layers of certainty fall away, and we are left to meet ourselves: unguarded and real.

Clothed with Skin

Photo by Valeria Boltneva on Pexels.

Once, if not as many, 

you'll be made bare in your presence,

Not by any but your own thoughts and conscience.

Like in a tanning factory, your vanity and pride will be flayed,

To an image of realisation that of mere skin, flesh and blood we are all made.

Rigid clothes of convictions will lay broken like shattered pieces of glass,

Any attempts to mend them will leave you with shameful scars.

Ashamed you will be of the mien behind your facade,

Difficult it will be, to digest the revelation of your flaws.

Rebuked by none but your own ego, from yourself you will try to escape and conceal,

But this mortifying state of nakedness will adamantly increase.

You may resort to haphazard searching of the wardrobes of worldly knowledge,

Remember! no fine silk or linen can clothe this void bareness.

In this confusion, you'll sort for a solution,

Desperate to make amends you'll resolve to complete submission,

Then is when you'll stand facing yourself — the mirror, 

which will throw at you the perfect reflection of your body — true, translucent and clear,

Standing upright, for the first time you'll judge and scrutinise yourself,

Only to discover that your robe lied nowhere but in the acceptance of the beautifully flawed self.

- Mercy Rebonica