Psoriasis

Psoriasis

I’ve lost a poem, somewhere in the depths of google drive

I knew what it was about

Bits and pieces of everything

I wrote about how, as a child

I’d collected my psoriasis and put it in a pot

I’d gone through a thesaurus

Different words for flaky

Scabby, scaley

Dead skin.

There were lines on their own:

About how skin conditions can change every 7 years

Am I physically the same person I was seven years ago?

Our skin and cells regenerate

If you held my hand 7 years ago,

Was it a different hand that you held?

The crux of it is

We all shed skin, we all lose things,

We all have new beginnings.

Biography: Charlotte Cosgrove is a writer and lecturer from Liverpool. She has published two collections of poetry and is the editor of Rough Diamond poetry journal.

Image: Unsplash, downloaded (https://unsplash.com/photos/a-hand-is-sprinkling-water-from-a-sprinkler-9oLilAADGXM) 16. 10. 2025.

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#CharlotteCosgrove #freshpoetry