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the unpeeling
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Scrollworks
The Unpeeling
The room was full of children spinning round,
a frantic, bright-eyed choreography,
stamping the dust, reclaiming sacred ground
with right arm, left arm, mechanical glee.
We wore the name like a crisp, unblemished sleeve,
a badge pinned neatly to a youthful chest,
where it was easy, static, to believe,
and every promise was a welcome guest.
But the rhythm slows. The bright lights drop away.
The chant decays into a wider space.
The outer rind of safety flakes to grey,
and time begins to carve a different face.
He was no spring chicken when the silence broke.
A century of gravel in his stride,
of heavy tents beneath the desert smoke,
and all the young illusions clarified
down to the bone. The title that we sing
was never meant to be a golden crown;
it was a textured, slow, and scarred thing,
a lifetime’s heavy armour melting down.
The label peels. The proud identity
dissolves into a mode of holding fast
—not with the swagger of a certainty,
but like a ship that strips its final mast
to meet the gale. The faith that counted then
was just the raw capacity to bear
the weight of being emptied out again,
and finding righteousness in bare despair.
So let the clock unwind its tighter gears.
Unwrap the map you thought you had to hold.
You cannot skip the friction of the years;
the skin must tear before the truth is told.
Turn down the noise. Step off the frantic floor.
Accept the quiet shedding of the known,
and walk, unpeeled, toward the open door—
to personhood you'd yet be grown into,
a place through journey to yet be shown;
a vast expanse of innumerable stars.
.
