[Poetry] Caterpillar, hi by Samiksha Ransom

I have been whacking caterpillars with an index finger

Off my window sill. Down my wall. Into her soil.

Not so today.

She has brought her wiggly body with her again

and creeps slowly on my cement like a slug.

Thick like my thumb, she is nesting an explosion inside.

I don’t think they’re that different - caterpillar and slug

mishy mushy slow things that I was taught to squish.

Instead I look at her today and know her for the first time

She is ravenous of course -

carrying a heavy body like that into my home again.

And again.

Not so different she and I -

we’ve both been places we shouldn’t

both been whacked with the finger of a Leviathan.

Slumped in soil. Both reappear. Again and again.

One caterpillar after another after another.

Both metamorphose.

Samiksha Ransom is a writer from Allahabad, India. Her work has appeared in Tint Journal, EKL Review, The Chakkar, JAKE, Live Wire, and more. Her work was longlisted in the Poets in Vogue Challenge by the Young Poets Network in 2023.