| Nation Learning Commons, Ida Green Communications Center: March 23 - April 10, 2026 |
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Transposal By: Erica Romm Upon their leaf, egg is safely small enough to not be noticed. Then the hatch and the growth, and the molt, and the molt, and the molt, and the molt. Until finally one must shed its last superficial skin to crystalize and redefine. In the chrysalis, body is undone by enzyme and time. The outline of caterpillar is blurred, obscured, and obscured, and obscured. Until it feels as if identity is lost and diluted to nebulous fluid. But the most vital parts of itself remain stable, unchanging, all the while outline of butterfly begins to emerge, to define, to define, to define. Soon, what was dormant tissue will be wing meant to fly, not cling. A monarch may travel three thousand miles before its time is up, but it will still remember the veins of the leaf where it was laid, it was hatched, it began to eat. Before its first molt, it was monarch already, a manifest fate, just not yet expressed. |
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