Chrysalis

James Lilliefors

Hope sleeps like a dangerous thought, waiting for the day. But there are things you must go through first: A crucible of dreams. The dreamless state. The rattle in the hallway that could be anything (even death, you imagine, rolling past on an old gurney). Hope sleeps like a dangerous thought, but wakes as something else, the way volcanic lava cools on impact with air or water, becoming black obsidian. How quickly we forget. The obsidian snowflakes glitter, frozen in stone, falling for you, waiting for you, to be caught, falling for as long as you’re willing to look. Who says we can’t?

James Lilliefors is a poet, journalist, and novelist, whose writing has appeared in Ploughshares, The Washington Post, Snake Nation Review, Door Is A Jar, CandleLit Magazine, and elsewhere. He's a former writing fellow at the University of Virginia.