When does all the reinvention, reincarnation, praying, and stumbling end?
Where does the transformation stop and the life after it begin?

To transfigure is to change, to become more beautiful and spiritual
And yet, each one of my successive reinventions
Feels more like sewing sinews to a fractured bone
Than weeks in which I praise God and embrace the transformation.

I am tired of reinventing myself.
It has been five years since I began to change–
Five years too long.
Five years since I first picked at old scars
Three years since I first changed into something – someone – worse
Two years since I escaped the weight of my skin for the first time
A year since I told myself I'd stop clawing
Two months since I began living with a new dream
An hour since I thought about putting my transformation on paper.
I am no butterfly; I am hardly even a caterpillar.
But I am tired of changing, of dissolving into solution just to re-form again.

It is summer now, as it always seems to be as of late.
And I now find that summer, five years ago, deserves to be laid to rest
In a quiet, dandelion-covered grave in the corner of my backyard.
And so,
I will let myself rest.
It is June, and perhaps I do not need to be transfigured to be lovely.