Do you know
how butterflies come to life?
It’s more frightening
than you might think.

Born crawling
a caterpillar,
close to the ground
naïve to the sky
simply existing,
tasting the world
leaf by leaf.

And then
it begins.
A hush inside the body,
a quiet undoing.
Behaviors shift,
instincts sharpen,
the soul sketches its wings in secret.
The old self unravels.

Did you know
that little caterpillar
melts into goo?
Not a creature in waiting
just formless, floating cells.
And from that
a butterfly emerges,
grown entirely
from what was already there.

I’ve been stuck in that goo
the nowhere between
trauma and metamorphosis,
neither alive nor lost,
just suspended.

But this summer
brought tears as ink,
and from the scribbled ache
came liberating wings
fragile but certain,
drawn from silence.

I've started flying.
But I still glance down
when I shouldn’t
afraid that my pride and joy
will be mistaken for arrogance.
Yet I’m proud
proud that I can love again.
Proud that flying
feels so familiar.

I like to land
booping noses of dogs
showing up beside strangers
on quiet benches.
To hear their voices
for the very first time
to sense the tremble
of their own becoming.
And when I look,
I see it:
a shimmer in their stillness,
a whisper in their pause.
The butterfly
still hidden in its goo.

And I hope
they’ll pass it on
this softness,
this seeing.

That ripple we call
the butterfly effect

Poverty, all around.
The poor squeezed dry
by every system,
every suit,
every layer of government.

I’ve decided to leave,
to live light,
to give away what I no longer carry.
Not to make a point,
just to move.

No one told me how.
No school wrote back.
No agency replied.
No office opened the door.
I asked. I waited. I knocked.
Silence.

So now,
I give away for free
what they would charge rent to store,
tax to sell,
or fine me for leaving behind.

Not out of wealth,
but because generosity
feels like defiance
in a world this rigid.

They won’t tell me where to go
just how to stay in place.
I only heard rules as a reply
No humanity in their solutions

But I’m not waiting anymore

Today,
I remembered something
I hadn’t thought of in fifteen years.
I can picture myself,
lying in bed,
staring out the window
hours past bedtime
a kid, frightened,
willing to make a deal with the devil.

Exchanging the liberty I grew up in
for a mirage of security,
for stories I told myself.
Trading attention, once abundant,
for crushing invisibility
like a child in a play
with no parents in the crowd.

Bartering for eternal solitude
when connection was all I ever craved.

I remember
giving away everything I was meant to be
for a life that made no difference.

And it’s almost cruel,
waking up now
knowing I chose this path myself.
It would be easier
to be the victim.

A thought hidden
in a buried drawer,
unearthed
after fifteen years of digging.

I think I’m alive again.

Driving to work felt quite boujee.
Just two days of work and then I'm free.
Traffic sounding like a symphony,
Your words turned routine into poetry.

Across the digital divide we meet,
Strangers connected by rhythm and beat.
In this virtual space, our souls converse,
Bound by the magic of metered verse.

Imagining a schoolbus, dogs galore,
A whimsical scene that makes the heart soar.
Like your poem, it brings a smile, a laugh,
A reminder that joy is the true path.

I say to you, with gratitude deep,
For the solace your words allow me to keep.
In poetry we trust, in verses we blend,
Stranger no more, but a poetic friend.

I used to look up to success.
Glossy and distant,
like yachts pulling into sunlit harbors.
While my brothers and I posed,
thinking cool was something you wore.
A picture snapped becomes a prophecy
one we’re sold before we understand
we're being trained to consume.

We watched the boats drift in
like kings returning from invisible wars.
And my brother,
bold, naïve, beautiful,
pointed and said,
“I’ll have one of those.”
When asked how he’d pay,
he simply explained:
“I’ll get it from that wall, just like you do.”

God, the way children believe -
no fear in their hunger,
no shame in their dreams.

Maybe I’m just older now,
my lenses fogged from wear.
But all I see is people
wrapped in things
not selves, not stories,
but trinkets, masks, trophies.
Like they forgot that real wealth
was once built on time,
on tending soil,
on tears held back
while saying goodbye.

Maybe I’m not better.
Just tired of pretending.

Fifteen years I spent hiding,
living so cautiously
I might as well
not have lived at all.

I thought if I became invisible enough,
it wouldn’t hurt when no one looked.
But now I see it:

No one's looking.
Not really.
They’re caught in the hum -
faces lit by screens,
minds dragged along
by headlines, algorithms,
urgencies that mean nothing
when the world goes quiet.

And I don’t want to be them.
I never was.

So what was I hiding from?
Not them.

Maybe just from the part of me
that believed I had to earn belonging,
to twist myself into shapes
too small to hold a soul.

I always tell myself I'm a people-pleaser,
a labrador in a crowd,
always wagging, always watching.
But maybe I just wanted connection.
Maybe I was trying to make sure
everyone on the bus had a seat.

And maybe
that’s not so bad.

I no longer look up to success.
I look for faces in the street
at how someone treats the waiter,
the ******* crying on the curb,
the man with cardboard for shoes.

We are all human.
All breakable.
All still learning
how to love
without masks.

And I want to shout it,
before greed drowns our voices,
before we forget
how to hold one another
without asking what they own.

Adults in disguise,
once gods to their children’s eyes,
now lost, just like us