Spin and die,
To live again as butterfly
— Christina Rossetti
Does the worm twist and groan as it sheds its shape or sprouts a new one? Does it occasionally weary of the effort, or of time hemorrhaging in its tear-shaped retreat? Does it ever succumb to the unraveling?
The longest months of winter are not the ones in which one sleeps—would that we could hibernate through scarcity and severity—they are the ones in which we are melted and recast in the kiln no one sees, perched beyond reach of our kin; our nerves exposed to every finger of weather, our fragile homes to every disturbance.