PERCHED PARCHED BUTTERFLY

The Other Side

My veins wear deep red satin, dancing,

and my heart pounds wildly before it shoots through

the sweet yet reclusive clouds in the sky.

Feathers that neatly match

the ones my head dream on

line your toned, edible back.

I'm feeling my way into

paintings that I choose to step into and live in.

They definitely

all have something to do

with you.

We sound and feel so eventual, so inevitable,

ineffable like husbands, eventual like the end times.

Of bounds and limits of this, I can't touch,

I know them not, so there's that.

I become the pastel dreams

you string around your honeyed neck

full of songs and pearls of pleasure.

I become the moon licking the beauty hived within

your rhyming thighs, bejeweled with sex and feelings.

I turn into the pale, plump fingertips that

mean a little more than the whole world to you.

I satisfy you by melting, so bravely, into

the liquid, golden sun that crawls through

your garden throat.

I search through the whole Earth to find your power,

only to learn the ways of becoming the whispering rain and going

d

ow

n

n

n

n

n

n

n

on pretty little you

and only pretty little you.

I can just about smell the manna filling the pantries of heaven.

I can just about

feel myself start to fly.

I can now dance myself into the nectar

that is found in the softly sighing

bodies of your favorite angel's trumpets

and

your favorite tangling honeysuckles.

I can twirl myself into

colors and winds that

seek your body out,

read it,

and touch it into feeling human again.

I can finally get to be

the mockingbird,

calling to you,

asking for your ears and your tears as

I paint violets in the air with my voice.

In what lives have I

met you, felt you, heard you, splattered you

across my fresh, just-stretched canvas heart,

already so easily painted by the

colors of the last living souls around me?

If you could just free me from your

perception of me, I could shape-shift,

writing myself into your corners and

sketching myself into your

borders,

I could turn into your world, if you really

wanted that.

It's so easy for you, baby,

to be mine unknowingly, so what's

holding you back from my hold on you?