Butterflies

I looked it up: inside the chrysalis, the caterpillar doesn't just grow wings. It dissolves. Completely. Into liquid. Into nothing recognizable. Every cell that was a caterpillar lets go of being a caterpillar and becomes undifferentiated soup— which is, frankly, the most honest description of transformation I've ever heard. Nobody tells you that becoming requires unbecoming first. That you can't just add wings to who you were. You have to let who you were liquefy and trust that something better is organizing in the dark. I've been the chrysalis. The outside looks still. The outside looks like nothing's happening. But inside everything is falling apart on purpose— rearranging itself into a shape it's never tried before. And the butterfly— when it finally pushes through the casing— doesn't remember being the caterpillar. Doesn't miss the crawling. Doesn't look down and think, I should have stayed on that leaf. It just opens these impossible, stained-glass windows it grew in the dark and does the thing it was always going to do: fly. Not gracefully. Have you watched a butterfly fly? It's chaos. It's beautiful, drunken chaos— zigzagging like a love note caught in the wind. And maybe that's the final lesson: transformation doesn't make you more elegant. It makes you free. And freedom has never flown in a straight line.