Every day she still dons a dress of asphalt
& a string of pearls shining like wolves teeth,
though she sees only bones and butterflies
behind her skin, nervous wings fluttering
against the ivory of her skeleton.

As she pulls up the silver spine
of her black dress,
her fingers tremble like
hollow reeds in the wind.
With mascara lashes sticky and dark,
she gives butterfly kisses to the air,
blinks back a memory
and bites a flesh-red lip.
She fights back the instinct to run
and instead tightens sinews in her shoulders
like the string of a bow.

Today,
she'll think she sees his face
in the mask of a stranger on the subway
and feel as if her ribs are folding inwards
like the wet wings of a swallowtail,
imagining she still senses
the razor-blade of his smile
against her neck.

She's haunted by a ghost.
Any real danger is gone;
all that remains is fear
and the echo of wings in the night.
She braces herself for the blow
that never comes, that will never come.

Tonight,
(as stars burn on
merciless as cigarettes)
she'll dream of old bruises
blossoming blue on her arms
like forget-me-nots.
She'll relive
him softly humming
I love you, darling, I love you-
as he already curls his fists,
those hands which always reminded her
of catching monarchs as a child,
when golden scales stuck
to her fingers for days.
(She suffocated every one
with greedy fingers so well intentioned
they didn't understand
the delicacy of gossamer wings.)

Yet every morning she wakes to stare
into the butterflies behind her eyes,
leaps off the doorstep and into the universe
with fear folded up like a love note
and tucked inside the heel of her shoe.

Those same shoes
click coolly on the pavement.
Her gaze glints straight ahead
as she hums like a dragonfly,
shining and defiant.
The world rotates towards her
as she moves in place,
so effortless seems the grace of her step.

And sometimes in the sun
she stretches out her arms like branches
of a magnolia tree
and imagines herself dissolving
into three hundred butterflies
which kiss the faces
of the first blooms
of March.