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Hortensia Anderson

Chrysalis

Aunt Hortensia! Aunt Hortensia!" Chloe calls as I sit on the park bench. She points at two butterflies threading through the lush green grass with their yellow wings.

"Did you know, butterflies were caterpillars?" she asks. "They change in a chrys - a chrys"

"A chrysalis" I say.

She pauses thoughtfully, then, "Imagine how they had to change."

I hold this child, remembering how I held her mother's rounded belly with both hands and felt that fragile flutter as if baby wings had sprouted in the womb.

"You are ever-changing," I tell her as she dances through the grass in the chrysalis of her imagination, singing.

eyelashes
against my cheek—
butterfly kiss