I am egg. I am goo. I am imaginal discs… the programming of spine, and masks, and wings with a dream of flying. 

Imaginal. 

Imagine.

Inside. 

I form. I hatch. I eat and shed my skin, and my masks come off, revealing the ever growing larval, child, and teenage faces.
I’m walking with wings beneath the skin of my growing body, and knowing, feeling the promise of them invisibly there, wondering, imagining, what will it be like to fly? 

I must try. 

The mask is tight. The skin must go. Go back to the goo.
So I coccoon. I form a chrysalis. Safe. Silken. Private. 

And I digest myself, and I rest from all of my eating, climbing, spinning and building. I liquidate into protein soup du’ imaginal discs. I am my own fuel for the rapid fire splitting and duplicating, triplicating, of cells I dream and sleep through. 

Then my antennae tingle, my legs, my eyes and genitals and wings… oh, my wings form as I dream of flying in the goo behind the mask in the glow of imagined sky in the imaginal disc of my brain.
And I dream myself together til the dreams and the wings take up too much space. The goo is gone, and I am hardening, and hungry, cramped, and bored. 

Cocooning stops here and now. It’s time. 

The chrysalis must go. This silken safe must go. There is only the memory of comfort here. 

It is time.

So I stretch, until there is hole, and the air is delicious. I stretch again. I stretch until I am baffled at my hugeness, and the beauty I have become. Wobbling and wet, clinging to the shell of my home.
My wings have eyes that see the sky. I must dry. 

I must rest. 

But there are others. I must know them. 

I must fly. 

It is time. 

So I exercise my wings, down, up down up down up… and adjust to the different lengths of my body. I remember… I remember so not being like this. I am shaped differently.

I am stronger. 

I climb. I hear and feel the call of the others. I see them on bushes beside me, and winging delightedly above. I too, am made for that impossibility.
A strong wind blows and I cling for dear life to the limb I’m considering letting go of, and feel I must be insane. Flying. I’d be oh so vulnerable. But oh so free. 

I climb.

And I reach the top, and my wobbling weight bows the upper leaves. My wings flutter a little and the leaf is relieved. My clinging feet are lifted.
When another wind blows and in a ripping screaming moment my home is gone. I am upside down and spinning, a blur of green and purple and broken home around me, flapping and flapping, and the flapping feels useless, until suddenly… 

it isn’t.

And I’m flying and the world looks different from up here and isn’t it wondrous this world? I am joy! I am lifted! I am life! I am young, and strong, and this final mask is mine, and I discover that I am beautiful.
And I am still hungry.

And I want company.

And I want love. 

And I can go anywhere. 

I am free!

Oh, God, I am light… thank you for this gift of making me 

A BUTTERFLY.

 

____________________________________________