Taylor Fox

Chameleons

Strange dreams occupy the waking minds

of wayward children slinking along

in chameleon skin.

Brilliant flashes of blues and greens

conceal the obsidian shell that houses

their counterfeit grins

and shields their vacant eyes

from a world that knows only

how to seek perfection

absent of happiness –

progress absent of

growth.

Seeking shelter

in the superficial

trappings of success,

they define their self-worth

through numbers on scales and transcripts

and give up the control they so desperately craved.

/ because how easy it was to be young and restless and alive and free /

And when that quest for existence

dulled into a hollow search

for suffering

and the scales on their backs

were shed in atonement to a higher power,

scattered in a metaphysical sea

of lost opportunity

they then realized that being

everywhere at once

was really

nowhere

at all.