if you want

to see something

rise out of the ashes,

you're going to

have to

let it burn first.

ripped the stitches that held together with your

skin, all while crying out, this isn’t how i want to live. and

who knows nothing more miserable than walmart at 3am,

where all you can think is, i don’t want to end up like them. 

so you’ve waxed off every hair off your body, but still

it’s not enough, that’s why you took off your skin. the only thing

left of this moving on, is telling your lover it’s time to stop

seeing them: i want all of the memories but you can leave me.

quickly, wrap the fire around your being; ’cause if it’s true,

fire is human (it’s living and breathing) and perhaps it can be a

part of you; but all you know is the burning feeling of swimming

in bleach at 7pm after work’s done and you found misery the only

pay for the day. and for a person of no talents, you sure do know

how to start one-sided fights with a person who doesn’t even realize

you’re mad at them.

soon you’ll realize this was just you battling your demons in the 

intoxicating darkness of your mind; but until then, keep looking at him

as you’re trying to understand everything but seeing absolutely nothing;

you’ll end up more lost than you had been. because no matter how much

your metamorphosis- haunts you, crawls up your skin, chirps in your ear,

flys around your mind, bites your goosebumps, taunts you with goodbye

--no matter what it does, there’s no escaping growing up in a world

that hates you. but soon, you’ll grow to hate it to through the act of

pretending to love everything he put you through. 

Bands of collagen wrap tightly around my arms. Once a soft cocoon of adolescence, they now tether me to a childhood that I desperately need to let go of. The doctor watches with feigned interest from below. Her stopwatch is his only concern. I've seen the others. So praised as infants, yet when they struggled to break free, she watched them and timed their death. The only one to ever live through this part, Thalia, watches me from next to her. Her eyes plead with me to eiggle harder. I can see the loneliness she wears on her face. Bruises and scars that adorn her flesh. Cuts that have long shredded her wings. She'd barely gotten out, but couldn't fly or escape the doctor, so now she's just a test subject.

I thrash uselessly, struggling to lacerate the tendrils that hold me from freedom. The doctor looks down, then back at me. Time is ticking. I gnash at the band closest to my neck. A tiny rip emerges. My fingernails and toenails also create several microtears. Using my feet and hands, I push against the back of the cocoon and try to use my weight to get out. The doctor seems intrigued by my tactics, and Thalia begs me to keep going. I could remember her voice, month after month, whispering that I'm special, that I'm destine to be the sister she always dreamed of having. She'd sneak in and hum to me while I matured, and even kept trying despite the doctor finding out and beating her for it. I had to get to her. I had to...

Suddenly, I hear the strips all snap at once. I hold my breath as I plunge twenty-fine feet to the ground. The impact knocks the wind from my chest and I lie, heaving. Thalia and the doctor come closer. The doctor looks at my wings and sighs.

"You've become grotesquely obese in the cocoon, but it helped you muscle your way out," she remarks, writting down her findings. "Thalia, get her to the chamber at once. She won't survive the first few days of adulthood without it."

The doctor's heels echo hypnotically around the toom as she walkd away. Thalia comes over, and while her fave is still stoic, her eyes are glimmering with joy.

"Welcome home, Hope," she says softly as she drags me away from the Incubation Wall.

I was no more than three

When I learned to hate.

I spat out bananas, green beans and Brussel

Sprouts. I banged my rattle

When the room was too hot, when the

Tall man came to visit or when the music

Stopped. I cried, I wailed

Tore at my collar when the Tall Man

Made my mama holler.

I was no more than seven

When I learned to hate everything.

I rolled my eyes in church, school, at my mama.

I cursed the Tall Man, The Fat Man, and the Yellow

One too, that came slithering out of the shadows

To sink their claws into me.