metamorphosis (without applause)

becoming someone new feels more like erosion than rebirth.

it does not begin with fire.
there is no spark.
only a quiet thinning at the edge
of who you were.

you molt in secret.
not the glorious plume of phoenix,
but the patient flake of old skin,
each cell releasing its claim
with a sigh too soft to hear.

you learn to be new
like a child learns not to drool—
without realizing when it changed.
not overnight.
not with ceremony.
but with repetition
and the slow forgetting of what once felt essential.

you used to walk like that,
remember?
with the click of a thought
you no longer think.
your laugh,
the way you filled a room,
even your silences—
they’ve loosened,
shed like the thin casing of a cicada
left gripping bark that no longer knows your name.

you write letters in a new hand now—
spindly, unfamiliar,
looping in places
you never used to loop.
you catch yourself reading old journals
like they were someone else’s autobiography,
annotating the margins with soft disbelief:
“i used to think this mattered.”

your fork hesitates at the plate
as if asking permission.
your tongue does not trust its own vowels.
you speak your name sometimes
just to see if it still fits,
like trying on a coat you once wore in the rain
before you knew what the sun could do.

you don’t break habits.
you peel them.
one ritual at a time.
nights when the silence
doesn’t ring with your old panic.
your spine uncurls slowly,
like a fern in reverse.

this is not heroism.
this is not some mythic quest.
this is a long apprenticeship to yourself—
the kind of living that leaves no scars,
only stretch marks where
you grew
too slowly to notice.

one day,
you wake and your hands do not shake
when you open the door.
you forget to flinch
at the old ghosts.
you realize you haven’t thought
about that thing in months.
and when someone says your name,
you turn
not because it hurts—
but because it doesn’t.

thank you for reading! do y’all get this one or am i being too weird with my writing… lol. i dunno, i’m trying new things.