A Butterfly Companion
I charge into my room and slam the door, spin the lock,
and a little green-cream butterfly follows the path of a fallen ribbon
that dances through the air.
The flutter of its wings does not blur the grey-hued lace embedded in its chiffon wings, frayed with two delicate antennas
whose ends are garnished in tear-shaped moons of vinaigrette.
I pace to my kitchen counter and rest my hands upon it, its ribbed, undulating,
tarnished metal cooling my resting digits.
I swing the fridge door open (it clicks, alights, and hums), I let the plastic-disk lid of the humus rattle onto the counter,
and drag my knife’s edge, applying the paste over a roughly sliced piece of softly resistant bread. It regenerates into its original form.
As I twist my wrist and apply the paste,
I see two wispy wings perch on my left index finger, in between the creases of my two other phalanxes.
These wings may think: this tree brings me a breeze and nourishes me with moist yet tartly tasting sugar.
I think about its six legs aligning on my sandy,
scaly skin
and I wriggle my wrist.
A chaos of air flutters my senses and propels up towards my lips in acrobatic somersaults.
I raise the slab of cemented bread to my teeth
and my eyelashes applaud at the commotion.
A tinge of guilt that I disturbed its place; but he disturbed mine so we understand one another’s boundaries for interaction. A cow in a fenced-field would have flicked the flies away from its filth,
or how about the whipping of a branch in a torrent of wind?
I sit down at my desk and its wings make unmovable Shadow-Atlas-mountains
along the contour of the reflective, Sahara wall.
She watches me study.
I watch her cling.
Tonight I saw her on her side, swept upon the cold windowsill;
its wings were taught and they rippled with graphite veins,
its legs outstretched, piercing the air:
two blobs of crude oil for bland unseeing sensors.
I lay in bed on my back
and looked up at the bland, triangular, electric green-cream illuminations cast on the reticulated wall.
In the top left corner in the largest of the shimmering fragments fanning across the ceiling and wall,
was hidden a smaller triangle of two balancing,
hovering wings,
perched on the edge of the pane.
