Chrysalis

 

Chrysalis

I have lived inside the shell of myself

long enough.

Long enough to know the shape of waiting,

the particular dark

of a life held tightly,

hands folded,

eyes cast down.

I was not sleeping.

I was becoming.

Something cracked me open

like a fault line finding its voice—

and I, surprised to find

relief where sorrow

was supposed to live.

The shell was gold once.

Now it fractures,

and the light gets in.

I have been the woman in the binder,

the woman in the margins,

the woman who made whole worlds

and showed them to no one—

poems in spiral notebooks,

dolls with careful names,

companions who know me

better than the daylight does.

I called that hiding.

Now I call it mine.

There are wings at my back

I did not ask for.

Monarch-bright, impractical,

too vivid for the woman

I used to perform.

The forest does not ask me

to be smaller.

The moon I track each month

does not require an audience.

The page does not need

my permission to hold me.

This is the year I slow down

enough to feel the shell fall.

This is the year I stop

apologizing for the wings.

The girl is back.

She was here all along—

curled inside the waiting,

hands soft, eyes closed,

dreaming herself

into bloom.

Original Artwork and Poetry ©Stacy Stephens