Chrysalis nostalgia

You feel it

seeping

like wet leaves

in a storm drain

You see it

in people’s walk

slow then speedy then exhausted

with tight skin in the wrong places

and loose in worse ones

while they swallow the sun

with eyes closed, lips one mass

and they dry

and sweat

like a bleeding carcass

on a distant, dirt highway

where even the flies

won’t go

You stop it

by busying yourself with

others and things and stuff

but the rain still falls

for the gutter hasn’t been cleaned

and tomorrow’s forecast

doesn’t look much better

when trying to avoid

getting wet and sick

with sputtering youth

You know it

that it’s gone

lost in them and you

during those silent dinners

those silent phones

and the silence around

that makes you tap your hands here

hoping to reach something else

besides it

For even though

it remains

when you don’t

and it is there

where you aren’t

and it is

when you aren’t

and when you are too,

it feeds off you

feeding off it

and trying to ensure

you can feed again later on

even if that means

consuming your tongue

with your own natural juices

*

I am caught dangling

in a breakup

where neither person

wishes to end

but have found an end nonetheless

made of clumped combs

and fumbled fingers

and complicated steps of how we got here

at an edge that breaths darkness

against the ebbing day

and with nowhere else to go

we crawl back

like butterflies remembering

the comfort and immobile responsibility

of a chrysalis;

or jump