Chrysalis
There he sat with the chocolate cake in the plastic dome, three-fourths absent. “Chocolate cake” is blasphemy, it’s more than that. Just like cake always is. Cake comes in with a rush of celebratory and familial feelings, but also those of much needed hope however large or waning. And this cake was no exception. Into the recipe fell love and the heartsick that lives close when those you love do not. In fell loving hands and tender thoughts shared in a quiet kitchen, late afternoon. Along with the butter and the sugar was a knowing heart eager to help. And of this cake there were few bites left as it sat next to an icing covered butterknife all under the protection of Sterilite.
He sat and as he sat he thought about her. The her he wants, the her she is, and the her that challenges him to carve at the tumors of his own character and to sculpt a better version of the human that sat next to that dessert.
The mug returned to the table like the gavel of a near dead judge, tired and firm. The vibrations from the landing displayed the sturdy nature of both the cup and the table it was set upon. Handcrafted tools, one holding the mug, one holding his coffee poured from an un-ironic French press.
The coffee was between hot and warm, the goldilocks of temperatures. And as he sat and as he sipped at it, and as he thought about her as the cake sat beside him, his skin began to crawl. Like nightcrawlers under a rock but woven together and slowly sliding down his spine, sloughing off his back leaving behind a skinless visage of red and maroon flesh.
It kept falling the worm-skin sliding like a dead man’s carcass. Only he kept breathing, his eyes kept on blinking as his own face dripped off like buckets of gray snot. It all plopped onto the floor, it crept into the pockets of his blue jeans and collected in his lap. It sounded like macaroni and cheese stirred as close friends laugh nearby. But the smell was the antithesis of joy or love of any kind.
The smell was an assault, coming on like bullets ricocheting in the foxhole of a World War memory, tear gas thrown into an anthill of protestors. The smell was a medley of scientific experiments gone wrong and rotten sewage. The aftermath of years of lies and a commitment to misery shedding like a mudslide of regret.
What remained was what lies under the skin. Flesh the color of bloody bubblegum. Under that, brittle bones at the primordial stage of strengthening. Under that still, deeper than the evolving marrow lied a golden thread of hope.
And that thread was hot, burning like gasoline flames licking at the sky. A million suns ignited at once, all lined up tighter than a fishing line. He would use this heat, harness it to power the dormant dynamo inside him.
He stood from the chair as the bugs of his molting fell to join the heap of sludge at his feet. He removed each foot with a wet plop and set them on firm hardwood. He walked and as he did the fibers of his thighs chafed like beef cutlets colliding. It hurt but the heat was too strong to ignore, he walked to the door and pressed his bare flesh to the handle, but the intense jolt was out-burned tenfold from the inner star.
He walked out into the elements, the light rain dropping like magma, the soft breeze whipping his back. He looked out at the darkening skies, scum-colored clouds and could feel his chest continue to pulse with breath.
And so it was.
