The Change Part 7: Cocoon

Curled in the nautilus of my imagination
Foetal yet full grown
The time of gestation
A holding period
Inside fingernail pink
The shell walls glow in the sun
Inside is a spiral staircase
In a library
In the fingernail room
I lodged in black, waiting.
Longing, yearning for the time to be up so I could leave
So I can transform like Le Cain’s Cabbage Princess.
Back into my real, authentic, true self.

At tropical world the cocoons of rare and oversized moths and butterflies hang on a dowel
In a humidor
They hang, like last years leaves
Tatty and brown
A crumpled felt hat from the dressing up draw
A discarded single brown suede glove from the 1940’s.

The humidor has a glass front so I can witness the transformation.
Daphne into a laurel tree
Princess into a cabbage
Well to ill
Life to death to death to life.

Once I saw the exact moment
The moth emerged from its cocoon
And fell to the metal mesh floor
And lay there drying
Waiting for exactly the right time to unfurl its wings
Warmed by effort, and pumping blood through the veins of its wings.
Test first horizontal position, then vertical wing
And it was up
and away it flies – free.

I have had my black for three long years.
Persephone in the underworld and Eurydice get it.
I was waiting for the exact right time to stop
I had almost come to the conclusion that this was it
Black from now on.

Then I had my diagnosis and thought
“I had better start living for myself
It is time to stop grieving for he is gone
But I am alive and have only one life.

It is time to get back on the ride and press accelerate – go go go
Luckily, or not
I expanded four dress sizes larger
Dumped the black
Bought the blue.

It is a relief
Black may be the unofficial arts school uniform
But that was never my motivation
Glad to put it on one side

And be blue.

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