Skin

Elliot Sauer ‘28

This piece reflects how I have carefully sewn together my identity. Picking and choosing what I want others to see, and what I want to put out into this world. I made a plaster cast of my face and then hand stitched different fabrics together to make a skin. This mask shows my struggle with understanding myself, while also showing how my confusion is due to my own hand, and my own thread.

I was born locking eyes with the sun. I was born with skin that was blessed with her light. I was born with eyes that could be seen in the dark. I was born with wings that let me dance in the wind. I was born with scales that reflected my brothers and sisters as I swam. I was born with a pattern sewn into my skin. I was born with the ability to love, to laugh, to feel. And I was born with the ability to fear.

I felt the soft whiskers of the grass trickle along my side as I grazed. They swayed and caught the radiance of light making them glow. I heard the harmony of my forest ring through my ears as the wind whistled, and the river sang, and the trees bellowed.

But it met the miniscule sound of a click that echoed throughout the forest silencing the singing.

That is when I looked up and my eyes locked with a piece of metal in the hand of an animal I had never seen before.

Then the ringing started. Then the river started to scream. Then the trees started to whine. And the wind started to howl. And then the grass felt like blades, and trapped my legs and I couldn’t move, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t run.

RUN. RUN. RUN.

I just stared at the piece of metal in the animal’s hand and felt the radiance of the light starting to dim, and the trees started to go quiet, and the river stopped screaming, and the wind stopped howling. And then there was a bang.

I felt my legs go out and heard the forest go silent, and saw my beautiful home go blurry. And then there was a feeling I had never felt before, it was like fire eating at my body and I let out a cry but there was no one to help me. And I was all alone as I fell into the blades of grass but now they felt like whiskers again. And as I laid there I felt a cold liquid press against my body and saw it flow through the grass. The once glowing green whiskers turn slowly and slowly a dull red. And I look up to lock eyes with the sun that blessed me with the ability to see but all I see is darkness. I can’t see my river, I can’t see my trees, I can’t see my grass, I can’t see anything.

And then, I can’t feel anything either.

I wrote a story about how man influences nature, my story about a deer who is hunted. I wanted the reader to feel the panic and fear that the deer felt so I wrote in the POV of a deer who grew up in nature and peace and her life being shattered in a mere couple seconds. I wanted to inspire people to create change not just in ways of conservation but to not be afraid and not get trapped.