Caterpillar

By Adrian Hobbs

It was small at first, the mark he left. Awake, I felt along my flank

and noticed, for the first time, a hole,

cylindrical and exact,
bored through me like a flawless bullet. It did not take much light
to see the redness on my hand,

the loss that left me spinning.

The next day I held my side and shied away from speech.

It was weeks before I saw him,
splayed across my sternum
like the whole of me was his;
thin and squirming, black, half-curled,

like a question mark,
or hook.
By then I was wreathed with holes, and couldn’t stand for the skin I lacked.

I was mute for his stinging ribbons,
the crimson tramlines he trailed down each arm. Mute as his fingers rippled,
and pricked below my skin.

I lay silent, I recall,
paralytic as a doll
when he crawled inside my mouth and made a patchwork of my tongue.

Now he cradles in my ear,
and rocks me nauseous into sleep. He explores me like a lover,
kisses bright as a lover’s stain.

And I am made a fountain.

Yet in the space between stillness I clutch at this: That in the moment of death, lost wings may grow and unfold in metamorphosis.