The metaphor is too easy. Also, butterflies and moths creep me out. Moving on.

There are few things more unnerving than thinking that finally, maybe, you have everything under control. I keep looking over my shoulder as if something else will be lurking there, like I’m playing a perpetual game of Whack-a-Mole with my responsibilities and emotions and entire life, essentially.

That’s okay. I’ll live. I’m frighteningly good at that.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

IMAGO

(Noun: From Latin imago for ‘an image, a likeness’)

The final, adult stage of an insect that has passed through its larval stages.

The creature twitches as if it’s stirring in the breeze, but she sees its legs move, its body pulse and shift. Its little crystal prison sways, shakes, and begins to split open, revealing something damp, spindly, its colors so bright it hurts to look at it.

She looks on, biting her lip, a clipboard in her lap and a pencil between her teeth. She can’t tear her eyes away, no matter how much she wants to. Transfixed, she thinks only of the way her lab coat swaddles her, about how she, too, given enough time, might emerge as something new.