you will thrive in your own cocoon—
legless arthropod wriggling out
of its leaved shell, crunching
on the stem of a marigold’s shrivel.
you crawl up the leaves like they’re
the steps of a winding staircase,
circling and circling to one day
step out of your cocoon.

you are your own skin—
a wing ripped in figure
eights of formative tearing.
at the bottom of a
wind-leaned green tower,
you are torn down as if starting all
over again, away from the pace of
a hundred other caterpillar’d creatures.

you are not quite a monarch butterfly,
not yet the zebra-patterned black and white,
but you bloom in the form of a familiar marigold, a daisy’d curve—
thriving as a flower, swaying and alive.
you must visit the filial leaves and trace
their veins gently.

soon you will thrive in your own cocoon;
as those plant’d seeds will
soon leave legless arthropods wriggling—
for how would a caterpillar’s cocoon wither
without your leaves crinkling beneath it?

My perfect winter:
precious in how
the summer still
seems to
simmer within
the metro station’s
humidity.
Even if the palm trees
still do shake
alongside the rhythm
of the wind,
my perfect winter
is hot—
pink like the day-ends
of summer solstice.
They are brown like
the sugar in
how you speak
to me,
sweetened.
Orange for
the lengths
of a coral sky right
before 6 o’clock.

And perhaps
I cannot know
a more
perfect season
until I’ve spent
time away
from my orange,
brown, and pink
winters.
But for now,
I will shiver
at 75 degrees,
I will chatter my
teeth at
this humidity—
so that I may
take your hands
in my own for
warmth,
and so that I
never forget the
coarseness of your
skin during
the most perfect
time of year.