Metamorphosis

It’s all happening without mercy
on time and inevitably
like breathing.
Shadows in full blossom
suddenly pierce your crackled heart
in that blue hour before dark.
Before washing the dust out
of the day in the sink,
before lighting a cigarette
and smoking the world away
or simply getting undressed.
No matter what you’ve been doing before,
now you’re the one naked,
the one alone.
You can clothe yourself in chain mail
you are naked,
and no one can see you.
Faces and words retire
behind soft padded walls.
Senses derive in their own cage,
under synthetic lights.
Each night there’s less and less
carmine, less and less dope
in your favorite wine.
Then, here you are,
unable to lie or hide –
and all that breathes and sighs
slips on your skin.
Solitude has silked your body, entire.
Oh what a dirty little secret
is the chamber of your dissolution.
You lie there like a peeled fruit
birds keep singing,
milk oozing from trees,
but your eye still opened
has no meaning,
your pulse not stopping
is a vain trance.
Yet a tender rustling
comes along with it,
no louder than cigarette paper
unfolding.
As if buried within your cells
lodged a capacity for wings.
Maybe nothing of you will remain
except that frail music,
maybe like the moth
there’s nothing else to save
ouside the chrysalis.
Life, before it liquefied
was just a tight net.
Now some voices in the dark
have the gall to call
you winged.
Oh please don’t stop,
mystify them.

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