future perfect

floating sloe-eyed and filigree
on the soft glycerine narcotic of evening breeze,
gunmetal butterflies were beating
their shimmering razors of wings -

my heart's fluid mirror in scarlet whorls
flowing and eddying
over quicksilver's molten vanity.

becalmed in dusk's vespertine lull,
you drifted about, bathing in the easy light,
languid feet teasing the ground.

these memories of mine are echoes now -
debris washed across
darkened oceanic distance.

but that night, after you left,
i baited their traps with time
and complacency distilled from
years wasted in spent relationships.

first captured then pinned
still quivering in the specimen case
fixed through the bulbous turgid
meat of their bodies, resistant at first

then a soft pop and spasmodic twitch
a reflexive shudder, still living
as the pin was driven deeper in.

slowly i starved them of appreciation
and laboured after the correct text
to render them commonplace -

a footnote, forgotten in a tome
filed and lost amongst the jumble
and impossible geometries
of history's corridors.

i heard a curious whisper as i returned home.
it smelt of ancient sylvan places,
glistening wet, crystalline at daybreak.
it felt like falling backwards into music.

a silvered rustle of razored wings
was all that remained -
thin skinned translucency pinned
to the stark whiteness of board.

shards of the pane that once encased them
lay shattered everywhere about, each facet
catching oracular reflections
scryed in leaden crystal.

our everything fell together
and i knew what was to come,
and that which was already done.

blacklit, ultraviolet at lands end,
we lay in pieces together,
spellbound by the whispering ache
of the ocean's plaintive call -

the saturnine white noise of future perfect.