Accidentally undressing

in front of a crowd

When I dropped my kid at pre-school this morning, out in the garden, gathered around a fence post was a small crowd.

They were zooming in on a creature, crouched on the fence. It was a holographic rainbow of leggy colours, emerging from a golden shell:

a cicada, hatching.

The maneuvering motor of its body was precariously balanced, clinging to the shell it was hatching from. I was sure cicadas are dark, perhaps greenish — these colours were absurd.

I learned later that this hatching usually happens at night. A red apple after dark isn’t red, it’s a black apple.* These colours don’t usually catch the light.

Like damp napkins, its wings unfolded. The capsule continued to cling to the fence. The cicada clambered out. Eventually, it turned a shadowy shade of green.

Eventually, it started singing.

Imagine, feeling that crack along your back.

Imagine, emerging from a lifetime beneath the leaf litter, suddenly knowing what to say.

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Perhaps this is the life of an artist, to be slightly off-beat, out of sync. It’s probably inevitable then, that you’d find yourself accidentally undressing in front of a crowd.

Everyone looks this captivating sometimes, but metamorphosis usually happens in the dark. You are dreaming with your body in broad daylight.

You feel like a live lolly, climbing out of its wrapper. It’s a tender moment, and you are not entirely at ease with eyes on you.

But your shell has cracked now; what else is there to do but shed it?

I know you know the feeling of waiting in damp darkness, mud packed around your ears, alone. But here is something new — you strike your first note and notice it joins a chorus. The music is everywhere.

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Sweet people,

I love nothing better than to bring people together to reveal their strange technicolour underbellies through writing. I’ll be running my 10-week online course Path of the Poetic Heart again starting on the 13th of March 2025.

Past participants have called this course “Brilliant” and “Life-changing”. Spaces are limited and registration is now open.

With love,

Rata

*‘A red apple after dark isn’t red, / it’s a black apple’ is from ‘Theory of Light’ by Joan Fleming.