mourning cloak

a caterpillar with an existential crisis

i am a caterpillar, soft and swayed as the leaves that i crawl on tremble with the wind. i like to see the sunlight shift from the bushes and shrubs and across the tall trees i could never climb to the top of. i have recognized that there is something that i need to become because i see butterflies but also know that i cannot fly which must mean i am not one yet. there is a chrysalis i dream of every night in the warm summer moonlight. however i am unsure of how it must be fashioned, what makes it, how spacious it must be for my final form to fit just fine.

i thought i knew, actually. but i still couldn’t fly and i didn’t know what flying meant to me but i still expected it anyway. it’s like this all the time, every season, every year, like a clockwork cycle that is tireless but exhausting. i await my transformation and disappointment finds me in the same place every single time. i wonder if maybe i am not meant for metamorphosis.

and please, do not ask me what epiphanies bring me to the answer as to what i am meant for. i have no idea. however one way i know i have metamorphosed is in my comfort in uncertainty. i am now okay with not knowing everything. a caterpillar is not meant for omniscience. i am okay with that.

so may the heavens dawn upon me every morning and i will greet them with a great okay-ness. i shall no longer worry about becoming a butterfly. i shall just be.