As I take a step on the walk leading up to my house, I startle a monarch butterfly from my little flower garden. I’m hoping it’s one of my caterpillars come through the cycle of chrysalis to wings.
It flies quickly away, lighting upon a hanging plant for half a moment before heading out to where only its heart knows.
I, too, must follow my heart. I’m reminded to be patient, to wait for the wings that will come, which is really not waiting — it’s work, a hard, relentless process pushing you beyond your limits.
I know things are changing. I’m changing. But it doesn’t feel like the magic hour of dusk — the blue hues darkening gray between day and night just after sunset; when night in its falling glides across strings, striking a chord of bittersweet homesickness for that which I cannot remember.
No, this is the twilight zone of nightmare, where up is down, where laws of physics are suspended and time recoils on itself.
What does she think, the caterpillar, when her recognizable self becomes unrecognizable, still encased in chrysalis and confinement and there’s no pay off to be seen? No guarantee she will fly if she does emerge. No guarantee she will survive. 
Somewhere in the chaos of dissolution and creation I feel myself reach out for something. Maybe it’s faith or trust or just wishful thinking. But where the known brushes up against the unknown, I think of how easy it is to admire the process of metamorphosis when you’re on the outside.
How different from the inside.
Where does the the butterfly find her courage, before she becomes the butterfly? My own walls seem to suck the life out of me lately.
The receding splash of orange and black remind me with one last fluttering of wings — no guarantee, only trust.
I turn and walk past the flowers. For the first time in weeks, I can breathe and the walls breathe with me. And that’s when I realize, my chrysalis is me. Interconnected, supportive. I’m no more captive than the caterpillar. When the butterfly emerges, the chrysalis is the midwife’s hand massaging her lungs, strengthening her muscles, giving her the necessary energy and strength to expand her wings and fly. Without the act of emerging, she could not.
No guarantee, only trust. Okay, thank you. Somehow, that’s easier now.
~ demian
