New Skin

My skin is different than it used to be.
More used, paved in.
Walked on by dirty soles.
Feet that stomped and tracked the wild in.
Treaded on when I’m pretty sure I put that sign up.
You know the one.
I’m like a coloring book
A kid endlessly scrolls through,
Looking for a blank page
That hasn’t been colored all over.
The problem is,
All of them are full.
I wasn’t even coloring in the lines.
Just ravaging each image,
One then two then three.
I just kept coloring.
I wasn’t even planning for the inevitable.
The end of the pages.
I just wanted to color man.
I didn’t time manage.
I’m no pocket watch,
But I swear I heard the ticking.
I just kept coloring.
Purple because that was my moms favorite color,
Then green because that one was mine.
I let everyone have a go,
Surely that wouldn’t do any harm?
Their colors, my colors, what would be the difference?
They were better at it than me.
Could make my pages be something different.
Something prettier on the outside.
I just wanted to color.
Now,
I am just skin.
A used palette,
Full to the brim.
Softer though too, and I smell different.
I forgot how to color,
Isn’t that wild?
Didn’t even know I was a page.
Now it’s all soft edges,
Endless remembering,
Time management and circumstance.
They all got damp along the way too.
I guess I forgot that
I just wanted to color.
So I stopped doing it,
Not even because the pages were full,
Though they were.
I just forgot my favorite color.
I forgot to look down,
Up, up, up, up, I kept heading.
Thinking there was something new for me
I hadn’t yet drawn on.
But I forgot the colors, left them on the ground.
And life,
She tossed me and turned me and I fell…
The remembering is here in these words.
I just need to want to color…