Chrysalis for the Faithful

I used to believe the world was stitched in green,

in leaf after leaf, endless and sun-warm,

each day just a soft invitation to munch and marvel and do nothing brave at all,

because being alive was already so much bigger than I could hold in my little soft shape.

No one warned me how still it would become.

That one day, the hunger would turn inward,

not for food, but for more —

for sky I couldn’t touch,

for a version of myself I hadn’t even met in dream.

And so I did what my bones whispered.

I curled in silence.

I wove the shell.

I made my cocoon, unsure if it was prison or promise,

and I waited...