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I punctured the gauzy nest open with a crow feather,
letting the feet of twenty caterpillars dazzle
my hand, over my wrist. I wanted to be a part of it—

nature, I guess—so it only made sense to take them
home in a large jar filled with broken twigs and grass.
I hovered my hands around the glass, watched

their bodies crawl and fall. It was a cruel act,
to wreck their woven home, steal their bodies.
I tried to be tender, though; I stroked the soft

fur on their small, long forms, and I never meant
to kill a single one. I was seven then. Didn’t know
the caterpillar mind, didn’t know what one

might need in a home besides Apple Jacks,
my parents’ bed to crawl into at night.
So when the sun released the morning

upon the jar in my window, I forgot it. You know
the rest: my mother mad, the toilet flush,
my panicked hands tearing a piece of tissue into dust.