Chrysalis Whispers

I gaze on you young one.
You fill your life with green.
Grazing, consuming, filling your need.
Your hunger compels you forward.

until — one day — you stop.
Stillness.
The desires of the past — and their fuel — must cease.
In being you must become.

Attachment seems upside down,
Yet with your footing secured,
the stillness remains. — You hang — and you jiggle.
How strange it must seem.

What you’ve consumed
now colors your outside.
The green and gilded casing
speaks of beauty.

Inside, your former stripes
Fashion chaos.
Component parts
Break and — recalibrate.

Prior observations reveal that
some have stopped here.
They don’t fully become.
Stuck in gelatinous muck.

So I encourage you through this phase in the goo.
Allow the sorting and you’ll soon get through.
What you’ll be, you could never imagine.
Unrecognizable really.

Now — even my voice — and my gaze
d i s a p p e a r.
Except they don’t.
The you from before — hears differently now.

Strange whispers of hope
land on newly formed parts.
I’m still here. So are you.
You’re becoming new.

—Carly Smith