Alone at Last in Animal Anonymity

Having decided that change will come
Or at least could come
The question became when?
At which point would the things holding it to this state
This person
Relinquish their grasp
Release it into a cave in which it could crawl
Molting its skin, shaking off old scales and spitting out old teeth
From the mouth of a stone cocoon
As a new creature?

And then what is it?
Is it the creature, newly on all fours
Or the pile of discarded skin, scale, and tooth abandoned in the dark?
And the other ends of the ropes around its neck, where would they be?
In the fists of those across from it?
Or instead dangling behind it
Catching its feet as it runs and tangling in with moss and root?
And upon leaving cave, it should be foreign to all former familiars
Freakish, frantic, frenetic in movement and mutated beyond memory
Safe, alone, at last, in animal anonymity

And so now
Newborn chameleon crawls across moonlit plain under cloudless sky
And the air is brisk upon its scales
And the dew from the grass slides coolly along its tail
But should this chameleon come across pond or puddle or pool
Should it crane its head down to water to drink
Should it glance its own eyes
Should it see in its gaze a shimmer of its old self
Should it experience recognition, memory

What then of those knowing vile eyes
That pull from its stomach the visions of past lives?
Must they not also go?
No, can they be masked?
And so skin mutates, mottles, and molts again
And then it returns to water
But still, in those eyes that know, it sees
And so now
Newly blind chameleon crawls through thicket and dense dirty forest
And clambors over moss and root
And collides with trunk and branch
Invisible now to it as it is to itself