A sapiens with loose skin I read a history of the world and I’m obliged to report that it’s loosened my skin from underlying muscle and bone. I used to revel in the stretch, love the predictable deformation each time I’d incidentally waltz through a moment and joy would bend my joints with purpose. This history incised somewhere, snuck in and slid right underneath and cut all the fibrous, connective cords. A bridge with its supports blown. Calm: seated, star-spangled skin flaps and sways me sideways just like my thoughts. Routine: walking, reverberations thrum and remind me. Energy: in a sprint, I risk deforming my character, and I can’t be returned. This is what it feels like to be corporeal but find no meaning. My sense of strict adhesion to principles, predictabilities, assumptions is no more. I think we tend to think that the knowledge we seek will bring pearl skin, gleaming and desirable and certainly beautiful. Maybe there’s some Truth to the idea that with sagging-skin age comes “wisdom.”