Peeling (October)

Our first mistake’s to believe every ten years or so we ourselves do it, who are anyway walking miracles. We have no power over replacement of skin cells, our own death-in-life. Our skin goes on doing its tough stuff from one decade to the next. Few things interrupt our laissez-faire attitude to the body impolitic: only sores, abrasions, wounds, rashes, tattoos and, most glaringly, sunburn. After a day’s gardening there’s October pinkness, first of the season, clarifying what microscopes show us any time: our living outer self is dead weight, rising to the surface and falling away quicker than starlight.