Break a butterfly (ii)

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

by Famke Veenstra-Ashmore

Sunday April 24 2022, 10:56am

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

Children, like seven high rise buildings (i)

against a white board, strung along.

Say I want to be

your pretty thoughts fettering your neck

and ankles.

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