Break a butterfly (ii)
‘Break a butterfly’ is Famke Veenstra-Ashmore‘s second poem in this series, interested in the fragility of intimacy

I want to see how you might break
a butterfly on its back
press its wings into pages which crave
your story, which call
for you peel off its scales like petals.
A measured voice that
inscribes those glossy lights as if
born from hand –
we’re sat on the edge of the grate,
those iron bars bending,
and layered, a path we never
travelled now reformed.
We share whispers and a soot mirage:
two empty cans
rattle with our voices, a chiming arrangement,
ourselves as hands,
our feet in lines, meet eyes, roaming in circles:
become pretty
thoughts streamlined, pretty thoughts on
an amber string
against a white board, strung along.
Say I want to be
your pretty thoughts fettering your neck
and ankles.
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