April Pameticky

Part 1
There was that time she was a moth
trapped between the glass and screen 
of a 12-story-up window. 
A great Polyphemus moth, 
She could not have truly fit between,
Flapping and patting her wings against the slide, 
until finally she put her head on the cool track 
and became something else,
Always becoming something else
And stepped onto a shore of glass pebbles made of purple sand. 
Be the sunrise, she said, in her mouth-less form, be the spell. 

Part 2
I think of that moment between breaking down and emerging form, 
when the moth is pupa-flavored soup in the chrysalis. 
And I wonder, does she taste the morning with no tongue, 
smell sound and feel the world’s beating heart, 
know that the whole of her life is spent becoming something else?

Part 3
Her wings emerge damp in the wet of what she leaves behind.
She is the push and pull of moonlight, 
the scent and sound of twilight wind.
She will taste the flavor of every flower in her feet…
And slide beneath the soil to become something else,
something new beneath the crescent moon.