Lord of the Butterflies

by Andrea Gibson

You take one pretty step and feel like you’re pouring bubbles into your own bloodbath.

you spoke about the vines covering the windows. Because the building is historic, the ivy is, too. I’m not allowed to cut it down, so in the spring when the leaves grow in, the house is dark as midnight. But in the winter when they die, the house is full of light.

Everyone around me spent that day grieving and every tear tasted like dance sweat drying in the morgue.

Dear god, how broke do you have to be to not buy people time to get out the door when the song goes to fucking hell?

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

Come tender as the trees forgiving the books for asking to be made.

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.

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.

Imagine, when a human dies, the soul misses the body, actually grieves the loss of its hands and all they could hold.

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

DEPRESSION [VERB] 1. to put on your best outfit and feel like you’re dressing a wound.

There was a typo in the book. The line read, I want to merry you. But merry was spelled M-E-R-R-Y. I thought, That’s what I want to do— merry somebody until their blush paints the town red.