🖤 From Water to Wing (The Dragonfly)

Some transformations are quiet.

Not seen.

Not celebrated.

They happen beneath the surface —

In places no one looks,

In versions of ourselves no one meets.

This poem came from that place.

The part of life where you are still becoming,

But it doesn’t feel like growth.

It feels like waiting.

Watching.

Surviving.

The dragonfly doesn’t begin in the air.

It begins underwater.

Hidden.

Unseen.

Learning how to stay alive

Before it ever learns how to fly.

That mattered to me.

Because people talk about change

Like it’s instant.

Like you decide to rise

And suddenly you do.

But that’s not how it works.

There is a long time

Spent beneath the surface.

A place that is:

Heavy

Cold

Safe enough to survive

But never enough to live

And something in you shifts.

Not hope.

Something deeper.

Instinct.

Your body knows

Before your mind catches up.

That staying where you are

Is its own kind of ending.

And then comes the breaking.

Not gentle.

Not graceful.

It hurts.

It tears.

It pulls you out of everything

You thought you understood.

But here’s the part people don’t always say out loud:

Transformation can be lonely.

It can be isolating.

You will lose people

You thought cared about you.

Not always because they didn’t —

But because they don’t understand you changing…

Or they don’t want you to.

Some people like you small,

Because it makes them feel taller.

That’s not your weight to carry.

If someone doesn’t accept you

As you grow into yourself,

They were never your people.

And that truth…

It stings before it frees you.

You grow.

They don’t.

And that’s okay.

Everyone has their own path.

Sometimes…

It’s just not yours anymore.

There’s a crossroads in transformation.

A moment where you have to choose:

Stay where it’s familiar,

Or move toward who you’re becoming.

I learned the hard way —

You have to let some people go.

Not out of anger.

Not out of spite.

But for your mental health.

For your own wellbeing.

Because when you rise,

You’re not untouched.

You’re not the same.

You don’t glide out of it whole and clean.

You come out marked.

Changed.

Lighter — yes.

But only because you let go

Of what once kept you alive.

“A dragonfly,

Made from water and wounds.”

That’s the truth of it.

This isn’t about beauty.

It’s about survival first.

Then transformation.

Then the quiet realisation

That you are no longer who you were.

Read the full poem

✍️ Author’s Note

From Water to Wing is about transformation that happens in silence.

The kind that costs you people,

Comfort,

And the version of yourself that once felt safe.

It’s not gentle.

It’s not pretty.

But it’s real.

Thank you for reading

Your DislexicPoet 🖤