beyond butterfly

before he flies adrift

he is an unlike bead:

gnawing brown caterpillar

dangling from the milkweed,

an unborn sneeze.

and every night

he regards the stars with angsty fright,

he cannot bear to be in their sight—

bitter brown blight upon the earth,

born with such undue affliction,

obsessed with what he could be.

and every morning

he gathers all the clutter of the clouds

all murky white

and shatters it into pieces

shaped like seeds.

every day he shrugs the clouds away,

his single blade grows one day

closer to the sky.

and he counts the days.

but that was all before.

before he wished the one thing he wished

he had never wished for.

a maple key plummets

and sinks like a ripple. he swims,

is too weightless to fall in.

two bodies attract,

nothing attracts him

but the sweeping undercurrents

and the cutting wind.

a human boy stomps through the oats,

awakens him. he is too high to be awakened

by crawling earthly things.

“look,” the boy cries, “look

at his pretty wings!”

he wants to sigh, don’t you dare go growing wings.

the mother sings

how his orange and black flash

against the buttercups, cries, “monarch!

you king of kings!”

he doesn’t feel like a king of anything

but outer space.

and he knows how the stars feel then,

glittering to everyone but them.

selfishness.

he wants to be anything but this,

bitter tangerine bliss.

before he gave everything

for what he could become,

now he gives up all for his unbecoming.

he lets his wings dispel like petals,

falls like the maple key into water,

grows roots in the earth

and stars in his belly,

he lets them sparkle and sparkle

and sparkle in the night sky.

he lets them let go,

calls them blessèd,

foolish,

butterfly.