As a butterfly,

I never imagined the world

I lived in.

It was always there

Manifest before me.

I could trust what I saw;

What I sensed;

What I felt.

But as I dream,

I become a man.

A king.

And I do not know

If anyone

tells me the truth.

What lies ahead are pitfalls.

The decision before me

Is set:

Do I remain a king

Or flutter away?

Two wings a'flutter

And then half a world away

Tornados kill us

A million wings now

Are recursively in play

Worlds connect this way

People I don't know

Flap their busy lives at me

Across my planet

Butterflies affect

Much more than breeze or waft

They come affecting me

Across the dateline

Sorties of variables

I am defenseless

Come what may today

Targeted me yesterday

Look! I've wings myself

What you did before

Provokes what I do today

In vicious circles

Or at least, that's what I am intended to become.

I am stuck in my chrysalis,

Struggling to adjust to the drastic transformation

From larva to adult.

I've shed my skin multiple times before,

Changed myself after feasting on the experiences that each person has given me.

The sweet flavor of oak, the bitter taste of milkweed;

I devoured them all, making them a part of me.

But maybe I bit off more than I can chew,

Maybe I forced myself to grow faster than I should have.

Because now I am trapped in a shell of my own weaving,

Where danger surrounds me as the world as I knew it dissolves.

Untapped potential, I am being reconstructed into something new,

Something beautiful.

That is what I must convince myself as I rip my body to shreds,

Agonizing, searing pain penetrating through cold numbness.

Repressed memories and emotions surge beneath the dark surface,

Each one a battle to put to rest, to accept and move forward

Past the haunting traumas that try to drag me down,

To keep me stuck in this hell forever.

But I was made for more than this;

I was made to fly freely in the sky, unburdened by the weight of the world,

To dance with the currents, graceful with purpose.

These wings are not developed yet;

It'll take a lot of time and effort to push through the barrier.

But I dream of the day I'll become a butterfly,

Where the horrors of my childhood are little more than a passing nightmare,

A mirage disrupted with a flap of wings that guide me towards a brighter future.

The way

we trek

the plank, the body

to which wings attach

a breeze over, passed through

and we held that, as Life

a rosehip

bubbling water

and called it This

the It

the walk, paused

along the body, plank

latched to miracles

honeycomb

by which we'd fly

with our hands

You wrote

and I sang, steamed

with feet that grew

in distance from the ground

red as eyes closed,

Close to the light.