b u t t e r f l i e s

It comes on subtly,

subdermal,

stuck beneath my sternum.

A disquiet

I try to pass off as something ordinary,

comes on like hunger,

but it's too majestic,

with too much organization:

a choir,

an orchestra,

a tide pulled by opposing moons,

fragility and ferality.

I have felt this before,

in a smaller body,

when happily ever after

was promised to me.

----------------

I cannot ignore

its silken adjuration.

Before I can label it,

I hear them,

clamoring.

I feel them,

fluttering,

those gossamer wings,

the benign collisions

against my stomach lining,

like rain on a tin roof.

I almost find it endearing,

the way they petition

through action not language,

discontented to remain

contained.

----------------

It took you.

Your genuineness,

your touch,

your voice,

even the mere suggestion of you,

and something within me expands,

boundless, proliferating,

a civil uproar.

----------------

I feel my insides repurposing

to create new pathways

through the ruins

where I once buried love.

My skin tightens.

Words abandon me.

My body no longer belongs to me.

----------------

Before you,

I called that sovereignty,

a world that mirrored my emptiness.

The horizon, featureless.

Love, sequestered.

My acceptance, placid.

I got acclimated

to the bleakness,

my bones brittle as birch,

as cicada shells,

as old book pages.

----------------

But with you,

I am unmoored,

weightless,

spectral,

one with the atmosphere.

Every glance you give summons it again,

and how fervently it answers.

The tension,

the spark,

every second between us

is a doorway,

and they gather there

in masses,

radiant,

anarchic.

----------------

I press my palm firmly

to my abdomen,

to assert authority

through pressure,

but they resist.

Instead of submission,

they badger,

and in that sublime upheaval,

I learn that control was never real.

----------------

Standing before you,

my knees threaten to fold,

my stomach a greenhouse

crowded with

a thousand fragile urgencies,

each one rising like

a dandelion spore,

each one,

a wish to be with you,

entirely.