CALLIE STOKES | METAMORPHOSIS.

METAMORPHOSIS

You closed the lid.

Everything was dark.

I begged for breathing holes.

Clawing the days and years

into the wall.

I watched the mice scurry

across the floor. The mice

became kin. Together

we built a tribe.

Taking turns

collecting crackers.

Hiding them under blankets.

Inside gashes and cigarette burns.

Each agony of the mind,

a maze. Sedated

I crawled with the spiders

along the halls

of your plastic cup.

I told myself

it’s better not to feel

anything, and lived inside

a skin graft cocoon.

You entered. Without permission.

You’d have killed me that night.

If I hadn't have left my body.

Callie Stokes is a poet and writer from northern Utah. She seeks to find beauty in what is deemed ugly or untouchable. “Metamorphosis” is her first published work.