Why Caterpillars Never Write Poems About the Cocoon

No one makes noise about how lonely the middle feels.

The middle between the prayers and the answers.

The middle between clarity and confusion.

The middle between who you were and who you are becoming.

We glamorize growth. We hang quotes on our walls. We write captions about healing. But then, real transformation is rarely beautiful. It is not aesthetic. It is not romantic. It is not tidy. It is fully of hills and ditches,and awfully quiet, and brutal in its honesty.

No one writes poems about the cocoon.

Because what is there to say, really, when you are stuck inside yourself, folding inward, breaking down the shape you once called home? The caterpillar does not crawl into its cocoon with a checklist. It does not take a selfie before dissolving into mush. There are no witnesses. No applause. No before-and-after montage. Just the pain of becoming. Just the surrender.

And somehow, we expect our own becoming to look different?

We want to become without breaking.

We want to change without releasing the version of ourselves that is outdated.

We want to emerge without ever truly disappearing.

But that is not how it works. Not for caterpillars. Not for us.

There are seasons when life will ask you to go silent. To shed the old, the loud, the visible parts of you, and sink into stillness. The part no one sees. The part no one claps for. You will wonder if you are failing, when in truth, you are forming.

And yes, it hurts.

It hurts to feel like you are losing your grip on everything familiar.

It hurts to admit that some chapters require you to be still when all you want to do is run.

It hurts to realize that your silence is not always a sign of weakness, but a womb.

You are not stuck. You are sacredly paused.

Like the cocoon, you are being undone and remade. This is not regression. This is resurrection, in slow motion.

And when you emerge..because you will,you might not recognize the wings at first. You might still walk like a caterpillar, crawl in places meant for flight. But that is okay too. Even butterflies need time to learn the language of the sky.

So if you are in the middle of your becoming, do not rush it. Do not shame it. Do not edit it to look prettier than it is.

This part is necessary.

This part is real.

This part is poetry in the making.

Even if it never gets written.