Metamorphosis

Into the chrysalis I crept,

Retreating from a life I'd painfully outgrown

And was unwilling to wear.

And I dreamt the reality that could not be borne while awake.

How did I allow such pain?

In loving you, I hated myself.

And so I gave 'til I was gone

While you were never there at all.

Pretty words were pretty lies

While your breath sustained them.

I wanted so much for them to be true

That I breathed my own life into them.

Inside the chrysalis I wept

For the loss of something never owned

But I'd believed had been saved

And I knew reality was but a dream that drifts away upon awakening.

Today the butterfly has flown

Leaving the chrysalis behind

And with it the fragments of dreams

And discarded ideals of reality.