"Someone once told me that each time you brush your arm against something, you lose a few skin cells,..."

Someone once told me that each time you brush your arm against something, you lose a few skin cells, and your body regenerates new ones.

So, for a year straight, I scrubbed
and
scrubbed
and
scrubbed
until my arm was raw,
but I made sure that every last skin cell you touched,
was gone.
I made sure every trace of your fingerprints on my skin,
was gone.
I made sure every hint of your breath that had soaked into my skin,
was gone.
I was tired of wearing you like a bad turtleneck sweater that suffocates and only limits my movement,

and tired of carrying you around like a one hundred pound dumbbell on my shoulders,

so I scrubbed you off,
and I have never felt more
alive
but bare at the same time.

I think you lived on my skin for a little too long, and now I am learning how to live without you,
in the villages of my freckles and little hair follicles,
but I am making my skin, my home,
its no longer yours to own.