The Second Chrysalis

When he shed his mother's chrysalis skin, he emerged into a world untouched by it.

He opened his eyes and found absolutely nothing.

Wonder looked without a name. There were no words yet, so nothing could be separated from anything else.

For months he simply was.

He gathered the whole world with empty hands.

nothing to carry, nothing to compare, nothing to notice, because everything arrived at once.

He stared at existence without even knowing there was such a thing as a world.

Then he grew. The world placed a basket upon him and into it dropped words.

Tree. Mother. Sky. Good. Bad. Me. You.

Soon the basket became all he knew because he could see only the basket; a chrysalis of words.

He used words to point to words, to describe words, to defend words, to search for words that explained other words.

And quietly, without ever noticing, he spun this other chrysalis,

woven not from silk, but from memory, words, culture, fear, hope, and everything he had been taught to call himself.

One day, the warmth returned. A crack appeared. The basket fell away. And through the opening he caught a glimpse of the same nameless world that had never left.