Lord of the Butterflies

by Andrea Gibson

that made you into someone who now finds it easy to explain your gender by saying you are happiest on the road, when you’re not here or there, but in-between, that yellow line coming down the center of it all like a goddamn sunbeam.

Every few seconds I’d eye the balcony for the glint of whatever might aim to tear the bodies off the boys holding hands or the girls with the haircuts short as my temper when rage is a decibel I can actually get to when I’m not just frozen and grief-sick watching history

It’s true what they say about the gays being so fashionable— our ghosts never go out of style,

Your name is a gift you can return if it doesn’t fit.

Don’t worry, the medic said, It’s just a panic attack, as if that would comfort me, to know I am the enemy, my body—its own stalker.

my own spine curling into the claw that strips me down to my day of the week panties— and it is always Doomsday.

Let’s hyperventilate like it’s 1999.

there isn’t a healthy body in the world that is stronger than a sick person’s spirit.

Thirty times last month I thought, I can’t do this another day. Thirty times last month I did it another day.

but you don’t lose a person like a set of keys because you don’t find them again and you can still get to where you’re going.

stopping me from carving our initials into a tree whispering everything that grows already knows who we are

Well—I think it’s untrue that no two snowflakes are the same. I think the snowflakes are just holding their hands in different positions—high-fives, and peace signs, and hitchhiker thumbs, and middle finger fuck yous. Every winter I try to catch as many fuck yous on my tongue as I can.

Do you ever feel like the best of you is something you’re still hoping to grow into?

I think the hardest people in the world to forgive are the people we once were, the people we are trying desperately to not stir into the recipe of who we are now.