When life feels suspended by a delicate thread
Change is inevitable
I sometimes feel stifled
Tightly constricted
Like a chrysalis
Struggling against transformation
I oppose the transition
And need more time to adapt
Today
A butterfly tapped against my window
Like change asking to come in
If I can comply with Grace
Maybe I too can transcend
And withstand the butterfly effect

Origami flowers and paper cranes
cloak my desk and litter the floor,
and one more
for each day that you haven’t been mine.

But it’s fine, I’ve more paper.

So I’ll keep folding, and repeat
step one through step eight. But now
it’s getting late and I can hear you
around the corner.
So in order, I’ll rehearse step eight through
fourteen as a means to bridge
the rift at the ridge of my
mind.

I can’t afford to be alone,
adrift inside.

Because I fear if I weren’t folding this paper,
I might foolishly try to manipulate the
stars
in the deep purple sky. My nights spent
mapping a light dotted guide. Then it’s
inside reverse, crimp,
and crease, until it’s one
perfect piece of art.
I fold, in part, because I know
that without this sheet, I would aim,
in vain, to
crease time and space into pretty paper shapes
where I’d reside in the folds with you.

But I am no Asteria, and the stars
are not mine to hold.

So I continue to fold, and
restate step one through step eight
and I’ll wait for your resonance to
dissipate.

I overheard last week that you need a new hobby
and since you know it can't be me,
consider origami.

When I sit down and think of
you,
as if on queue I feel like a crater might open up
beneath me at any second,
swallowing me whole in one traumatic, melodramatic
gulp.

And I know that when I plummet
down
down
down
and further yet down, I’ll
exceed the speed of light and sound, set afire and
Hellbound. But then I’ll close my eyes and
swallow my pride. Because although the journey is
no doubt unnerving,
I’m every bit deserving of the ride.

He and I
sat on his bedroom floor planting a garden last night,
silently hoping that something might sprout.
Because we can’t shake this drought and
the water is stagnant.
He knows, and I know that the new life we’ve sewn
will flourish and thrive
because to keep it alive is to follow
the recipe.
So there we were on the ground;
hand over water,
water over soil,
soil over seeds,
the very least they need
to blossom and grow.
That might be what we needed, a formula
to help us bloom in
the cover of the night,
a strong man with a green thumb to
clip our blighted leaves before we dried up
and blew away in the wind.

But he’s not a seed,
and I am not water.

So let us sit and dig
through the dirt spilling onto the floor
and implore this new life to burgeon.