Butterfly
This poem is dedicated to the amazing artists I know (including the one within myself) who continue to grow and transform as we share the most intimate parts of who we are with the world.
Though we may carry fears of judgment, comparison, or failure, we become our most beautiful selves when we do what we love. Our cocoons break open, and our journeys unfold in public even if we try to shrink away.
Before we realize it, we have evolved into something we may not have even thought was possible and it so emotional seeing how everyone has grown, changed and blossomed !
It has come to my attention
That when it comes to life I have yet to learn my lesson.
I am the lonely caterpillar climbing its way
From ground to stem
From stem to leaf
to Eat, to Grow, to Be,
To Become… a Butterfly.
But it has come to my attention that I have been saving my energy.
It has come to my attention that I still feel lesser than even as those around me are cheering.
I feel myself on the stage, soaking in the searing eye of the spotlight.
I can see my fear is hard to see from the audience and I remember:
This is a performance.
I have found that I have been playing it safe
Keeping my innermost demons locked away
Encapsulated within bulletproof barriers with a combination
I have forced myself not to remember.
It has come to my attention that I might not love the attention.
That I’m sitting behind my letters thinking this is good enough,
it will never get any better so chill while you’re ahead.
They don’t know any better.
They don’t know of the unwritten poems fast asleep asleep in your head.
They’re not paying attention as you distract them with surface level connection. I’m glossing over my pain with pretty literary rose-coloured paint and I sit back and think “This is okay.”
But I know the truth.
I’ve seen it in the eyes of people giving it 110% and I think: “Why can't I get to where they are yet?”
They expose themselves as they emerge from the cocoon
We feel it with them as their lives rush into us
from the rivers sourced by their trauma capped mountains.
You see them. They see you. I see you. You see me
But I’m afraid
I fear one day my words will become the code
that opens the dreaded safe.
I’m afraid I will have to dig deeper to find the treasure
that was never meant to see the light of day
My little caterpillar will go through its metamorphosis in the most gruesome way and I’ll become a butterfly for everyone to see.
It has come to my attention that
instead of the lonely caterpillar between the blades of grass
I will be forced to grow
To change.
It has come to my attention
That the lesson I need to learn is:
When you're a Beautiful Butterfly
It's harder for you to hide.
