Lord of the Butterflies

by Andrea Gibson

even life is like funeral practice: half of us already dead to our families before we die, half of us still on our knees trying to crawl

into the family photo.

I’m going to spend most of this outing in the bathroom stall falling toward my death at the speed of darkness because my parachute doesn’t open when I leave the house.

On days I have a hard time keeping warm in my own weather, I imagine what the flower wanted to say to the first human trying to name half its petals love-me-nots: No, that is not how anything grows.

Of all the violence I have known in my life I have never known violence like the violence I have spoken to myself,