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kiran goswami  May 2020
Ecdysis.
kiran goswami May 2020
Next doors, on the next floor,
I see a woman, everyday.
On some days, she looks at me with her eyes lifting off the newly mopped floor
On other days I find her staring blankly at the cloudless sky.

Her eyes, some days kaleidoscopic,
Some days achromatic,
A blank verse.


Her eyes hold her summertime sadness
And her happiness as capricious as melting snow,
While she stretches herself between her found past and lost future.
She ends up falling,
Softly,
From her core,
Like dough being stretched from both sides.
She picks herself up again,
And folds herself in her kitchen,
Like dough that fell while stretching.
She sways but never falls,
like a bobo doll


She always plucks a flower from her garden,
A rose.
Like it was given by her first love,
Or, by no one.

Her lips, scarlet yet pale,
She speaks three lines a day, a haiku.
But I hear three hundred sixty-nine, an epic.

Every fortnight, when the moon faces the west,
She picks a few sheets, thumbed and joint together,
called 'Cinderella'.
She reads to herself,
In a melancholic tone.
Just like her grandmother did.
She too was like Cinderella,
But Cinderella never mopped the prince's floor.

She smiles slightly,
when she looks at the new frame,
that embraces her old photograph.
And both smiles find similes between each other,
They look similar and are yet different.
She smiles again to drop the previous one,
like a wisteria that sheds its mauves.


She wears her enigma and dances with the moonlight,
While she talks of the days she loved.

She looks at the calendar and finds her birthday marked.
She knows again,
she will shed another part.

These parts first emerged when this glass doll fell
and
smashed into pieces.

Like a snake, she performs ecdysis
and every year a part of her is gone
until there is no more left to lose.
Thirty-nine years, and she lost herself twenty-nine times since she was ten.


Age Ten:
Her Barbie doll was thrown,
She had to ‘grow up’.
She was ten after all.
But when she tried to pick up a sword,
They told her ‘no’
She was a ‘girl’ after all.

Age Twelve:
Dad no more played ‘throw me up’ with her,
She could no more touch the sky,
She looked up in envy,
While the sky stared back with prejudice.

Age Fourteen:
Crimson and scarlet defined her now,
Every statement carried a clause,
and every clause a red stain.
Her calendar started being marked with red pen.

Age sixteen:
She was praised five times,
Her achievements were twenty-five,
While her brother was cheered a hundred times
But his achievements were ten.
During all her math classes she used to question
When did her parents’ ‘half love’ for each turn into one fourth for her.

Age seventeen:
The playground and the streets only heard the voices of boys
And never her laughter and cries.
‘Do not go outside; it is unsafe,' she was told
Her mother constantly reminded
‘Darling the world outside is dark,
Keep the doors of the heart closed'
She finally learnt a hundred such phrases.

Age eighteen:
She got a rose for the first time,
A fallen one.
She knew another first love was rejected,
like her.
Alas! she lost a love.

Age nineteen:
Her best friend changed from her mother to a collection of papers.
Her secrets changed from new toys to young boys,
She lost the pages of her heart with each rejected letter
She lost her mirror friend, who she thought was no better.

Age twenty:
The kid was lost,
She finally grew up,
But her feet told a different story
When they swung in the air to
‘If you are happy and you know it…’

Age twenty-two:
Pale, wan
Lean body wrapped in red
Her hands painted with heena.
And her lips sealed with lipstick.
The artist yesterday became a canvas today.
Age Twenty-three:
The chaste woman,
Now belonged to a man.
She used to scream out her insecurities,
He used to burn her purity.

Age Twenty-four:
Cradles,
Milk,
laughter and shrieks.
She left her cries in the tears of a child’s eyes.

Age Twenty-nine:
Wrinkles and stretch marks
Loose skin and spots so dark.
She was ageing,
Losing her clear young skin.
But a mother of two, didn’t care for such petty matters,
She didn’t give a lark.

Age Thirty-five:
‘Study well, be polite’
She told her children.
‘We will, we will’
Was all she heard.
‘Spend less, listen to me’
She pleaded with her husband.
‘I will, I will’
Was all she got.
She did not know when she had lost the respect for which she had always fought.

Age Thirty-nine:
Words left unheard.
Prayers left unheeded.
Shrieks lost in vacuum.
And she in her gloom.

She reminisces about the old,
While she loses the new.

As the day begins she collects her scattered words,
And tries to string them together with each chore.

Every Sunday she watches 'Roman Holiday'
Maybe she too wants her freedom,
Maybe she too wants to go back.
But like a 'macaw' that gently leaves her feather,
She too leaves her free past.

And when she blinks every three seconds,
I find the colour of her eyes changing.
From the darkest oceans,
To the lightest lilacs.
From the tiniest saplings,
To the tallest leaves.
From the withered clematis,
To the blooming arabella.
From the roses that she never got
To the blood she always bled.
From the dying dandelions,
To the fresh fallen snow.
And from the lightest night sky,
To her dark black eyes.
I find stories in her,
Unwritten so far.

Every 30 hours she drops an eyelash ,
Just like she dropped her dreams and hopes,
While she was busy becoming
A daughter,
A woman,
A wife
And then
A mother.
She is an ode to herself,
And a ballad to others.


And by the end of the day,
She becomes a poem.
A poem that is never written or read.
Mike Essig  Apr 2015
Ecdysis
Mike Essig Apr 2015
Seven years
of molt and shed,
people lost,
mistakes made.

We change,
but we live
one person
at a time.


OK, I'm a new man.

But what kind
of man.

mce
evelyn augusto Nov 2017
"The act of molting or shedding an
                      outer cuticular layer."

I knew coming into blue,
recognized that
love colored my eyes too.
For days I was blind,
ached,
starved for loves sake--

Convinced that so
much was at stake!
I wrestled with desire
and hate,  
denied longing,
feared fate,
fought the need to mate,
then would compensate.

Irritable, I'd agitate.

I knew coming into blue
& embraced the devil too.
Writhed and wrestled
then shed you--
becoming something new.

By:  Evelyn Augusto
Cha  Oct 2018
Ecdysis
Cha Oct 2018
Boat to an island
For every mile
All at once closing in, moving away
Ecdysis
In every cell

To dare, or not to dare
To be here
In the vibrations of uncertainty
The breathless breath surrounds us
Dancing with the smoking cigarette
We made a pact
As we leaned on the sky

I forget where
In the white world
Of crumbled sheets
Iris to iris
Coming up for air
Like a seal in a vast ocean
Of your smell
I put my trust
Hands down
I left it there
Don´t need it anymore

Hand striking in slow motion
Future singing in the field
Where flipping birds
Take flight
To become words of love and devotion.
Arke  Jul 2018
Become
Arke Jul 2018
in amphibians, the process
is called ecdysis
shedding, casting off, transforming
birds will moult several times a year
flourishing new plumage
orchids will regrow fallen blooms
the process is natural
but not any easier
especially when we grow apart
but everything changes
and everyone changes
there is no true sort by same
go through a metamorphosis
transmogrify and evolve
leave yourself behind and
recreate who you are
above all, never fear
the change of becoming
Lucanna  Sep 2017
Python.
Lucanna Sep 2017
Black and green scale segments
My coat of arms
I twisted around sage brush for 30 years
I had predators
and potential nests
Always
Foregoing eggs
Alone but capable of swallowing the world
Moving through long narrow casing
Like a jawbreaker swallowed by an ostrich

Then I met you

.Ecdysis.

I shed thin snow skin
A layer of suffering slowly flaking off of me
A new dermis of
a love I have never known
Affection I've never shown
and a part of me never grown.
Carolyn Diana Nov 2020
Soon
I'll be gone

Those souvenirs you submerged
against our lashing tides
will resurface
and be washed out on shore

You'll hunt for me in places
of empty spaces
that once was our home

The sixth sense
you neglected
will prance on your mind
throwing down the gauntlet
against your withdrawal function

And your skin, undergo ecdysis
lurching for my touch

You'll lift up your eyes
to the black and blues
drawing constellations of hopes,
hoping for a shooting star

Chanting recitals of repentance,
seeking redemption
you'll sacrifice burnt offerings
of your priced possession
'Time'
Awaiting my return

I'll send you back my empathy,
reduced to ashes

You'll ponder,
Is this what become of us?
Time defying our union.

Years there on
you'll have me engraved
in your cavernous chest

And I'll be your only religion

You'll search fragments of me
in others
And meander down the lorn tracks
to fill the void

But before long
I'll be gone.
8/11/2020

— The End —