I remember the butterfly
brittle & pinned to the black
velvet of a shadow box.
How it hung next to her dresser.
She loved that butterfly,
the orange & yellow of its wings a riot
in that house of neutrals: the worn brown couch.
The black prayer books, her wooden rosaries.
The unusual extravagance
of it. She & her sister,
the two who never married, alone
together in that cluttered house—
I had to touch those orange & yellow wings.
I pushed a chair to the dresser
& took that box from the wall. How delicate
those wings. How easily the first rip came—
an accident from my small hands.
But not the second. Or the eighth.
& I didn’t stop
until all that was left intact was
the thorax. The abdomen, the proboscis.
The antenna. I didn’t stop
until those wings were orange & yellow
confetti littering the bottom
of that black velvet box. I didn’t stop
until she took her frame, her gnarled fingers
soft on my five-year-old hands,
& stashed it in her closet. I didn’t stop
until she filled that empty space
with a crucifix
borrowed from the living
room wall.
