once, you were small enough to fit inside a whisper,
bones soft as moonlight,
fingers curled like question marks.
the world was too big to hold, so you clung to a name,
wrapped it around you like a second skin.
but nothing stays.
you learned that when your voice stretched,
when your laughter cracked open,
when the mirror started asking questions you couldn’t answer.
your hands,
look at them now
no longer tiny, no longer trembling,
big enough to shield your own eyes,
big enough to wipe your own tears.
the caterpillar never asks why it must split apart,
why the body it knew becomes a coffin,
why change feels like dying before it feels like flight.
but still, it unthreads itself into something else.
still, it breaks to become.
you will not be who you were yesterday.
you will not be who you are tomorrow.
but somewhere between the unraveling,
somewhere in the spaces left behind,
a pair of wings are forming.