Dead caterpillar by Becki Hawkes

Dead caterpillar (on a balcony in Wapping, London) by Becki Hawkes

It has the exact weight and texture 

of something still alive – 

all its own colours each pale hair  

still holding shape  

a regiment of slender winter trees 

teasing my palm. It’s not yet moved 

but each time 

I gently nudge its armour inwards there's 

a spongy resistance a tiny beat of skin that is 

almost an answer  

a taut prayer on the cellular level 

private and biological 

Everything this evening 

is machinery: the wet plants in their orange plastic 

me on the balcony with the broken caterpillar 

the balcony itself just a box on  

a bigger box of flats  

the looped backs of the city the yearning cranes 

the garlic smoke from someone else’s dinner 

everything holding everything else everything  

slippery and insecure. Suck right down to the molecules 

the soaked gold air  

and there are always options  

empty eager seconds 

in which things could still go either way 

The Thursday it happened 

was quite a normal Thursday 

I’d just finished washing up when I got the call my 

hands were still slightly damp and I knew 

that if I could just keep things 

indefinite 

there was still a chance.  

Septicaemia is such a pretty word  

let it play on your tongue 

and it could be anything really: an island 

a minor river goddess a fitness app 

the scientific name  

of the butterfly  

this caterpillar is going to become 

---

Becki Hawkes is a writer, communications officer and former newspaper arts and film journalist from London, UK. She has had short plays performed in various small theatre venues and festivals, has had a poem published as part of London's Poems on the Underground and, when younger, was shortlisted for prizes including the Christopher Tower Poetry Competition.