There's something I need to tell you

March 1, 2014

There’s something I need to tell you

I want to tell you

about the caterpillar.

You know the beginning:

the creepy crawly caterpillar creature

inching on the ground, munching leaves, growing,

growing, shedding skin after skin, until

one day, she hooks herself to the soft underside

of a leaf, and peels off her final skin

to reveal the chrysalis hidden beneath.

You might think that metamorphosis

is like hibernation, that the caterpillar curls up

snug and asleep, and in her dreams

she sprouts one wing, and then another,

until she awakens and finds

her butterfly body

has simply bloomed.

But this isn’t so. Instead, I want to tell you how,

without hesitation, without doubt,

the chrysalized caterpillar dissolves herself,

bit by bit, all soft muscle, each tiny foot, breaking down

into a swirling white-yellow mess of cells,

and, somehow, these cells

reorganize themselves, restructure themselves

into something completely new, something

previously inconceivable, forming antenna after antenna,

wing after wing; each nerve and fiber,

each piece of the heart,

re-imagined;

rebuilt.

And the old crawling creature, whose body

has been transfigured—this being has not died!

No, miraculously,

this young winged thing remembers

the thousands of leaves she herself once traversed,

the broad blue sky she once longed for,

and everything she ever learned

in her caterpillar days.

All of this I need to tell you,

all of this you need to know, because

what I’m really trying to say is

for you,

my love turns butterfly.