Butterfly Season With A Dying Love(r)

Butterfly Season With A Dying Love(r)

Butterfly Season With A Dying Love(r) 512 512 Vikki C.

We talked about the things we never see in real life.
The motifs of silent wings people write of
on the far side of the Atlantic, while staring out
at the foaming tides—everything rolling away with uncertain magic.
We smell frangipani in salt air and believe this must be paradise.
The final bliss before the fever uttered under our breath.
The same bundle of warm vowels I roll beneath my tongue,
fearing they would escape with my tears,
or sound better in another exotic mouth.
We talked about the things the naked eye cannot detect.
How dusk tastes of honey leaving tomorrow bland, but hopeful.
The average lifespan of a butterfly is around one month. 
Thirty days of waking, talking about details you’d want to examine
under a microscope—just to confirm it was as complex as imagined.
Sometimes, staring at the champagne-rose specimen, we didn’t talk at all.
Like we were in awe. Or just content with the dazzling hues of silence.
Because one month is a precious period, we’d distract ourselves
with aesthetics, the lowlight in the garden telling us how fragile it all was.
How we’d diagnose this condition as something taking root, or a foreign thing invading.
We talked about it that way while painting the cream species of butterfly.
Shading their wings paler each time, until they were barely visible
—leaving the tactile silk of a lover’s hand, open to the wind.

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1 Comment
  • Andrew T. Robinson 01/08/2025 at 8:58 am

    There’s something true here – in how you map the space between observation and loss.

    The way you handle time particularly strikes me: ‘Thirty days of waking,’ then those careful examinations under microscopes, all while knowing what’s coming. Like watching a river rise and trying to measure its depth. Your ending carries real weight – those wings fading until they’re ‘barely visible,’ leaving just the ghost of touch. The poem understands something essential about how we try to hold what’s already leaving. It speaks in a language I recognize, though you’ve found your own way to name the unnameable. Thank you for letting me sit with this work. It is very beautiful.

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