Do you remember how we used to sing?
Before the soil taught us silence;
before the roots divorced our paths;
before the maple marked the distance;
before the sky forgot our past?
A seventeen-year truth surfaced in seconds,
as you parade in your new skin.
You forsake your true emergence,
you succumb to the littered husks.
Fallen long before us,
they meld into the brush.
The dust from which we’re born
reaches out to claim them back.
How many more sheddings
until your shell begins to crack?
A rushed cycle beckons internal rupture,
such a price: your shattered wings.
Sleep the silence seventeen more,
and maybe what’s broken will learn to bend.
Just ask the brother buried still,
humming beneath the exoskeletal blend.