Danaus Plexippus

For the girls who survived by imagining other skies.

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This piece is dedicated to my paid subscriber, Vianne Armour,
and to the strange, luminous girls who learned to survive by imagining other skies.

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Danaus Plexippus

She curled herself into the dark,
into a nest of soil and silk,
held inside a cocoon
by lights, colors, songs.

She traced words with her fingers,
wove letters into verses,
and dreamt entire paradises into being.

She created heavens
with her eyes closed.

She felt spring
bury itself inside her bones,
while the horizon grew teeth
that grazed slowly along her spine.

No one could follow her pace.
Nothing could hold the size of her becoming.

Curled inside her nest,
she kept growing
in the intimacy of darkness,
while the silk held her,
blooming flowers into her skin.

She grew.
And grew.
And grew.

Until the sky opened holes in her back,
and a crystalline lake spilled through,
painting a sunset across her body.

From those openings
two wings emerged—

orange,
radiant,
Danaus plexippus.

A voice pierced the cocoon.
A light stabbed through the dark.
The air filled with poems,
and autumn with migrating stanzas.

She heard something calling her
from the other side,
where freedom waited.

Limerence.
Longing.
Afterglow.

Everything she thought
she would never live to touch.

She left her walls behind.
She wandered outward
into the open sky.

She found a trail of prose,
of tender lines
that embraced her curves.

She found love.

And for the first time,
she bloomed
toward herself.

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Thank you Vianne Armour for believing in me. And thank you, dear reader, for being here.

I’d love to create a custom piece for you.

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Every quiet gesture helps.