it’s like the light itself has shifted its angle in my eyes, refracting differently now, catching edges of things I never used to see, colors that were just… background before, and i wonder if that's what happens when you finally shed the skin of someone you were, if the actual cellular structure of your perception recalibrates itself, because it's not just the external world that looks different it's how my hands feel against the surfboard when I push out past the break, it's the thrum in my temples after holding a long breath underwater, sensing the pressure shift around me, a pure physical knowing that tastes of exactly where i am, and there are still moments, fleeting ones, when i see a reflection, not in a mirror, but just a flash of a memory, and for a split second the person there is an absolute stranger, and then it washes away, like seafoam on hot sand, leaving behind this other being, this raw, wind-chapped thing that barely resembles what came before, and my whole body just exhales into that recognition, a deep release.