by Nick Gisburne
A minor wound, the tiniest of bites.
We lock him in the cellar all the same.
The light inside him fades as troubled nights
Replace his sober thoughts with shade and shame.
A strange, dynamic entity evolves,
Still fighting with the damage to his mind.
The cure, in which we have no faith, involves
The sweat and skin of all of us, combined.
A filthy rash, infected, forms a crust,
And soon becomes a suffocating shell.
We fear disaster, vowing that we must
Restrict what grows within it to the cell.
The chrysalis erupts. He did not die.
He stretches, bright, reborn, a butterfly.
