Just like a caterpillar
She's gone through changes-
            those relevant  stages of her life
The process is long
And is full of pain
Until she becomes
A beautiful butterfly

Even when he walked through that door for the first time
The thought of engaging with him in any sort was a crime
Ultimately my first thought was
Now I understand why we never crossed paths
An aggressive, secluded, sexist male entity
However, preoccupied by my own judgement, he thought me to be pretty
And all of a sudden, that grotesque mortal molded into a handsome beast
Nurturing, loving, controversial but attentive the least
Gracefully and gradually I fell for his mediocre personality, Him
Oblivious and blinded by his own ****** of happiness, I, -
     hypnotized by the fairy tale, did not see the photons of our love go dim.

I ask if you want to
escape
when maybe we're only
synthetic
bound together by the
wire
slipped between our
skins
filching at each other
inside
these metamorphosis
cocoons,
waiting for one to come
outside
of our shelled carbons
nearing
the brilliance of the city
lights
as though slops of rain
dancing
off of tall windows was
like
the sky setting itself on
*fire.

I am a lost cause and they’re still waiting to grow old
if you heard me say that you’d be disgusted but
you’d say it right back
to you I am a flower on a broken stem it’s hard
to miss the grief in your eyes no matter how many times
I tell you I’m not dead
I can hear them in the other room their voices
tucked behind mourning veils
it’s like they’re circled around some abandoned chrysalis
like she quit while she’s ahead and
if lives were prophecies hers was not fulfilled
(oh isn’t she
isn’t she empty)
they have pictures of the time she raised butterflies
they still have the empty jar and she stopped missing their wings
a long time ago
they told me I died and I swallowed dirt to prove them wrong
(oh isn’t she
empty)
I cut myself open expecting a desert
and instead I found a waterfall

Transformation.
To be transformed.
Seed to flower.
Child to adult.
Caterpillar to butterfly.

A wave can turn to a hurricane,
a flame to a wildfire,
a stormcloud to a tornado.
It looms,
it darkens the sky,
it frightens.

But does not the shore dry,
the forest fizzle out?
The sun sneaks out behind a seemingly never-ending stream
of darkness and devastation.

So, too, do we transform.

A boy became a man,
but not before
he was absorbed
by darkness.
Only thereafter
could he seek out the sun.

Peace comes after war,
recovery after illness,
healing after injury...

This transformation,
it is greater,
more magnanimous
because, too,
that process,
that search,
journey,
his darkness...
it stretched on for what he presumed was his
                                                                                eternity.

He was scared.
He was alone.
And then,
he triumphed;
he needed no one.

And then,
out flew a newly
transformed
him.
Out to the world,
new world,
brighter world,
out he came...

a butterfly.

Echo and Narcissist

He stared into her life
It enveloped him, metamorphosing his reality
Sometimes we are changed until we dont remember
those quaint things that we pretend to adore
and lose ourselves in the Medusa’s gaze
of a life
trans-formative and different.