the in-between

the in-between

I opened
a chrysalis once.
I wanted to see the butterfly inside.
Emerge
wings translucent against the April sky.

You can’t rush life, you said.
Watch pots boil,
snow turn to ice.
I should have listened more in science class, but where does the water go before it comes back down as rain?

They don’t explain the moments between forms.
How you can still hear even after your heart stops beating,
and how the caterpillar dissolves.
Becoming
without knowing what it will become.

This is the season of half-formed things.
There is a space
after the leaving,
before the arrival,
where nothing speaks in full sentences.

There are no metaphors here.
But on some nights,
when the body forgets
to hurt,
I walk out barefoot
to feel the earth say still here,
still here,
still here.