Everyone always expects a butterfly,
When they find that fearless cocoon;
Hanging over certain death,
And inviting a birth from a new womb.
They expect a sunrise to arise,
To dry out their wings and take flight.
Glittering generalities caught in icarus's wings.
People expect the best from your worst,
And you'll expect that that's best.
Yet this expectation leaves us cursed.
Like the monarchs, who dance under the sun;
When moths are birthed, they dance under a dead one.

I reject the notion of expected beauty,
I reject this reality that-
I need to dance in the sun,
Shine bright beneath the trees,
And fly high to melt my wings,
I despise this idea
Because like the moths,
I will dance among the stars
Between the moons of Jupiter,
And sing with selene in the night.

I will burst from my cocoon
Not in your beauty,
But in mine

I opened the gifts one by one,
knowing that the softness I felt
under the antique Santa Claus paper
was yet another bundle of fabric,
more clothes to add
to my ever-expansive wardrobe.

One by one, the patterns were revealed to me:
some plain black cotton,
a Paris print with a sparkly pink tower,
paper cutouts the size of my favorite dolls,
and at last, a sewing machine.

I remember a roomless memory,
my mother and I hovered over the machine,
the internet failing to teach us
how to maneuver the thread.

“We’ll try again later,” she said.

Now, I open the drawer under my bed,
remove a dust-covered box,
running my fingers along the top of it.
I remove the as-new machine,
my failed future.
I walk to my computer, switch taps
from a Buddhism study guide
to an empty Google Docs.

I wonder if I was a seamstress in a past life.
Did I watch my family create the cave paintings
while I sat in the corner, hide on my lap
with a splinter of bone in my hand,
feeling nothing but bliss?

Did I live in the Edwardian era,
tailoring a perfect three-piece suit,
a walking skirt, my daughter’s chemise?

Did I ever pass my grandmother
in a secondhand store,
with my goal of finding a perfect neckline,
my favorite sleeves, a plaid pattern.

Did I find them among the stained and unloved,
did I make them into something beautiful?

Was this not a flashback, but a foreshadow?
Was this a hint at my next life?
Will I do the same with my daughter,
passing down the cotton and glittered tower,
hugging with triumph when the machine roars to life?

Will I be there at her first fashion show?

What if there is no past or future.
What if my soul is me, unchanging, stable.
What if I’m a butterfly,
every passing second another cocoon?

For I am a tree,
and these memories
are my branches.

My left arm holds the present,
the current reality. I fail to sew
even a button, but my dreams
reside content.

With my right arm,
I hold another present,
equally as real.

In this world, I made my doll a dress,
a bedspread with the leftover fabric.
In this world, I am not a poet,
and I don’t often dream.
In this world, my floor is my stage,
this fabric is my home.
In this world, I know not of other realities.
In this world, I live buried in my ignorant bliss.

like a butterfly emerging from its cocoon
I raise my own tattered wings to the sky
cursing the inadequacies,
throwing away all doubts,
shedding my second skin of half-truths
thrown into my head
by words so keen on my own destruction.
by time that had stopped for three hundred days.
by a pen that seemed never ending,
inhibiting the thoughts within my head.

with a new smile in my eyes
I take a newfound strength in my arms,
lift up my wings
and bring myself into a new flight.

You are a butterfly
that flies and perches
on a corpse flower
throughout the rainy season
in December.

poetry is wings
fluttering against cupped palms
to keep & set free

Butterflies flutter,
Utters of lethal lustre,
Seeped in like sugar.