Sometimes I worry about you. ;) Your dark imagery continues to delight: "Those you buried beneath the rotting oak leaves... wrap yourself around their empty bones", but maybe that says more about your readers than it does you. ;) The scream of an old life ending, to wrapping yourself around death, it's quite the cycle. You stated the this started as something else, but morphed into something else, like someone transforming into a dark creature. I'm curious where that starting point was and when you started to realize that the idea was changing shape.

I loved this prompt! It's utterly archetypal once I wrestled it away from the earwormy "Can you dig it? Yes, I can!"

I did start out more as keyboard-musing about family, tribe, where you belong, how you realize who your family really is and how you fit in with those you identify as holding your heart. I've got a big wolfdog here and he's so packed up with us, that the analogy/metaphor flowed out of the idea of den, pack, tribe, family, skin pretty quickly. Trying to imagine becoming more canine than human and thinking of a more primitive way of burying and mourning and remembering our loved ones.

I like your take on it and I've enjoyed reading how others interpret it. It seems to me that it's really a ponderation on transition, shedding a false skin and donning a real pelt.