Does the caterpillar know
When it puts up its walls
What awaits inside?
Does it fear what is to come
Or forge ahead unafraid?
Why does it build them?
Are they there to protect it
From the dangers outside
Or to keep it together
As its very self melts away?
What does it feel
Falling apart and being rebuilt again?
Does it hurt?
Is the pain indescribable
Beyond all it’s ever known
Or is it numb?

When it emerges
Does it look back?
Is the end worth the means?
Or does it even remember
What it no longer feels?

What lies beyond
These walls
This storm
The unknown
The unknowable
One step
One day
We find out
And the butterfly stretches its wings