Caterpillar Dreams
I agree, everything is broken. But what if breaking is the way to get where we're going? I was never so wrecked as when they cut me open, pulled you out. While one nurse sponged my blood off your body, another balled up sullied sheets. I shouted: I love you! I love you! I love you! Loudly so you would hear. My husband was embarrassed. I didn't care; you were here.
Ache as a mother circles the broken world, rides breath up and down. Every time we part, my heart extends to enfold you, edges of me diffuse and seeping. Going on ten, you make your own friends, your own mistakes. Every day I surrender to your becoming. In my abdomen you grew like a secret, ripe as a planet, until my belly button popped and the arches of my feet ached.
Living things, unless they die, digest themselves to transform. The caterpillar molts its body becoming bigger, when (shock!) it hands upside down and liquefies. But that isn't the end. The imaginal disk provides blueprints for wings and conserves two pieces of critical luggage: it's gut and ability to breathe. I desperately hope that I have one: a guide to coordinate this wreckage.
How long until we see our bodies are all bodies? We co-create this world of rubble, blunders and epiphanies. Snowmelt the morning has filled every interspace, each pore overcome. The wind makes a moaning sound over open mouths. We feel it like a din that can't be spoken. We can't trust our bones when our bodies are so full of ache: we are a world that wants to be.
The imaginal disc, what a thing! Built into their crawling bodies: precise directions for flight. Can you imagine? Before it is too late, see the grandmothers in the grocery store, the harried moms at pick up: what if they held imaginal discs for that future world, bequeathed to us at birthing? Let us ground down in our guts, breathe deeply, while we remake this world from our bodies.
