the house sheds its skin

you are not supposed to help
a snake if you find it mid-shed.
still, i want to. my desire to unburden
is sometimes destructive. here is
your fresh skin. here are my teeth.
the house is crumpled, trying to find
her new body. the moon stays full
for three days. competes with the sun.
i have been trying to find a new body
inside my own for my whole life.
each answer disappears. i think i was meant
to be a cicada or a lanternfly but 
instead i was given flesh. the house 
has holes in the walls. 
the house hungers for more doors.
we do not make them. i touch 
the place where once my uncle wanted
to cut a portal. i touch the place
where my sibling once punched
the wall. the wound, never healing.
if the house becomes something else
i hope it becomes an obelisk. you might say,
"but you can't live inside an obelisk."
this is true but i am not worried about that.
i am worried about what will be left
when the shedding is done. maybe i will
just make a quilt with the dead skin. 
i know no one else will want it. maybe they
will pretend things are not changing. 
that is typically what my family does. 
i do not blame them. who wants to lose
everything in exchange for something
terrifying? the last time i slept inside the house
all the windows were crooked as if they were
threatening to fall out into the yard. 
i touched one softly. it felt like
the surface of an eye.