Lord of the Butterflies

by Andrea Gibson

Malcolm, who doesn’t have secrets, just stories he owes no one.

You don’t want a soft death. You want a hard life that is your life.

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

that I’m tough as Christ forgiving the nails.

like we could actually get comfortable being the uneaten animal in the lap of the man making lampshades out of human skin.

It is American as apple pie to want to stretch the distance between the killer and the crime,

twenty tiny holes framing a would-be flatline

I got so low I had to look up to see rock bottom, and,

praying for someone else’s sun to not go down,

A tongue that might also whisper, Sweet sweet soul, heaven is in the other direction. Please don’t make gravity play god.

how we’ve all lost so much family when we find people we call family, we’ll do almost anything to not let go.

I could feel hope traveling backward to find us,