Sometimes shedding skin feels like death descending at your window calling “rat-ta-tat-tat” in a sing-song voice, with scythe and sharpened glee. Sometimes edging your way out takes years, like wrestling out of wet clothes that never did fit but kept you warm all the same. Tentatively retracing steps, an ancient inch-worm in reverse. Slow perspiration and whispered cursing. And afterwards you wake startled and sticky, not knowing where you are, suddenly a newborn kitten kneading blindly with paws, a knock-kneed calf in the caul needing licking. You try to hold on lightly, this time. Each moment another layer of snake skin in the making. Another death in waiting.