The Molt

August 23, 2026

Change hurts. But so does staying the same.

I was terrified of a few things as a kid:

1. Glowing red eyes in the dark 2. Having my feet molested 3. The wrath of my parents 4. Cicada husks

You know the ones. 

Those empty exoskeletons clinging to tree trunks, fence posts, and brick walls—tiny monster shells with hook-like feet and slit backs, like something that crawled out of a horror movie and left its skin behind.

My cousins thought it was hilarious to pluck them off trees and stick them in people’s hair.

Ugh.

I'm an adult now, and they still give me the creeps.  The irony? I actually like cicadas. The real, living ones.

I recently read a great Bukowski poem where he complains that “cicada” is used too much in poetry—like it’s a literary silver bullet.  Use the word cicada, and boom: you’re published.

cicada

writers love to use the word “cicada” in a poem. it makes them believe that they are there, that they have done it. every time I see this word in a poem, I think, damn it, haven't the editors caught on yet? that it's a con? a way to milk the game?

and look at me: here I'm using it: “cicada.” well, that means that this poem surely will get published. see? it works.

Cicada, cicada, cicada.

Poof! 

Beetle-cicada appears , dressed in black and white stripes like some kind of gothic referee and grants you publishing.

I won't wait for the check on this one.

What's wild is how they spend most of their lives underground—quiet, unseen, gnawing on roots, cool and hidden from birds and beetles and snakes.   Then one day, it's time.  They rise.  Transform.  Sing their strange song.

They become summer.

Last night, I dreamed I was having breakfast with a giant cicada. Everything it said came out in that raspy ch-ch-ch-ch sound, but somehow, I understood perfectly.

It liked the tea.  The eggs, not so much.  (It poked at them with a claw and muttered something that sounded judgey.)

After breakfast, it handed me a tiny black helmet—custom-made for my dream head—and motioned for me to climb onto the back of its motorcycle. 

Well, not exactly a motorcycle. 

It was more like a cross between a mandolin, a grasshopper, and a comet.

We zipped through clouds, dodged between Saturn's rings, and finally landed on a shimmering planet where the trees glowed blue and hummed softly. 

Cicadas. Everywhere. 

Not just insects, but tall, glistening beings—armored, radiant, some still cracking open their backs to let their new selves crawl out into the light. These beings weren't living underground for seventeen years.

My cicada guide turned to me. 

“Ch-ch-ch,” it said. 

Then it offered me a thin blade made of light and pointed to my chest.

It was asking me to molt.

I hesitated.

 Tried to laugh it off. 

But my hands were shaking.

I looked down at my body—soft, unfinished, full of pressure just beneath the skin.  I could feel the new me beneath it, wriggling for air. But I was terrified. 

I was afraid of the change.

Afraid of what I’d leave behind. What it might mean to become something else—something I’ve always been, just hidden under a layer of politeness, duty, fear, routine, marriage, roles.

What if I shed my old skin and people looked at what I used to be and recoiled? 

Not because it was ugly, necessarily, but because it was real.  Because it wasn’t neat or acceptable or easy to explain.

What if they said,  “Oh. So this is who you were all along?” 

And worse—what if they were right?

But deep beneath that fear, in the marrow of the dream, in the hush between the cicada’s ch-ch-ch’s, I realized: 

I am aching to molt.

I want to become the self I’ve half-dreamed but never dared to wake up as.  The guy telling the truth, even when it hurts.  A creature walking away from the roles that no longer fit.  The one who chooses aliveness over approval. 

Who writes something so raw it makes people gasp. 

Who kisses someone in the rain without checking if it’s allowed.  Finally admiting he’s tired of being obedient.  Who wants more than endurance.  Who wants to feel joy and danger and awe and yes.

Yes.

That’s the sound the cicada really made, I think. 

Not ch-ch-ch. 

But yes yes yes. 

Yes to transformation. 

Yes to exposure. 

Yes to the strange, shimmering self inside the husk.

But still, I couldn’t do it.  Not yet.

Even in a dream, I couldn’t crack open.  And that’s okay.  A dream isn't asking me to molt.  Just showing me that I could.

My guide, revved the mandolin-comet-bike. And we rocketed back to home.

Without change, we all end up on The Road to Nowhere

Close My Eyes Forever