It's not fair that you can take me in your arms
And then run away and leave me to live without you
Until you drift back again.

It's not fair that when I had a fling
You looked through her photos, wondered if I loved her more than you
And yet when I remind you that I am
Yours
Before anyone else's
You remind me that you
Are his.

It's not fair that when I meet a girl
Whose fingertips make me shiver
Whose voice quickens my heart
That you seem to know
Even after such a long, long silence
You seem to know and instantly return
And I remember how I love you and
Fall to it.

It's not fair that you keep me here
Not close enough to touch
But just close enough to dream.
And it's not fair
That I love it too much
To want it any other way.

Yesterday
I got a tattoo.
The artist had coppery hair
That slid into her eyes.
They were green
And I noticed that they changed color
From dark to light
Sometimes almost turquoise,
Sometimes mossy and deep.

She scared me right away because I wanted her hands on me.

We talked about art.
Then we talked about girls.
Then we talked about life
And how when she was young
They teased her for her Southern drawl.
I realized that was the music drawing me in to the sound of her voice-
The faintest remnant of an accent,
Just enough to touch my skin.
It was just a little rough, like velvet rubbed in the wrong direction.

She worked on my shoulder
And I would turn my head to watch her.
Even though I couldn't see the ink-
I could see her face,
Shadowed by the light above her,
Lips parted
Eyes focused and passionate.

It is very dangerous to watch an artist work
To look at her face.
You don't know how easy it is to love someone who holds beauty in their fingers, who molds and shapes it and brings it into the world.
You don't know until it's a possibility dancing in the air before you,
And suddenly you think you must've looked too long...

I tested this feeling, tried to find its limits and its dimension,
Tried to figure if it was solid or smoky.
I couldn't tell, but
I noticed her hands on me, gentle but firm,
And as she was lost in her art I realized that I WAS her art,
And what a way to feel alive, to be a canvas for someone's passion for life!
And I nearly shivered,
And I suddenly realized that I was leaning into her needle,
Subtly but undeniably
And I could not unknow the fact that the pain made me breathless not because it hurt
But because she was inflicting it
Molding me, changing me, making me art and reaching into me somehow.

Afterwards we talked for so long that I walked with her to her car.
She hugged me goodbye and it took me by surprise.
I wonder if she knew any of it.
I wonder if she enjoyed my skin the way it enjoyed her fingers.
I suppose
One way or another,
I will find out.

You are going to drive me the rest of the way to insane, aren't you?
Alright. I've already hit a tree once this year. Bring it on.
I'd go anywhere with you.

Oh, Mr. Prufrock,
Pinned and wriggling on that wall.
Sometimes I wonder what those painted butterflies feel.
Sometimes I think
I know.
Measured with stretched bits of thread,
Taut and clean and precise.
Labeled with little placards
Like neat white grave markers.
How macabre, that we must
Skewer
Lovely things.
Define them,
Limit them,
Destroy them to preserve them.

I
Am formulated too.
I have felt the cold cut of it in my chest.

Behind that glass, up on that wall,
I wonder what that royal blue, feather-light creature felt
Just before the lights went out
With a bulbous, giant eye peering down
Carefully impaling it.
Those shiny black legs--- so fragile!---
Struggling.

Oh, Mr. Prufrock
I grow old as well.

I wonder if they ever feel---
Those winged acquisitions of ours---
The crumbling fragility of their beauty
Of their bodies.
Bodies that a stiff breeze can knock asunder,
Bodies that a sewing needle
Can unravel- I am OLD.
Your words stick me through
With who I am,
A sword the size of a pin,
But I am powder light
I am
Paper thin and I am so
Absurdly trapped--- A soul of supernovas
Held inside the tentative shell
Of a monarch butterfly
King of
"If you touch me the oils from your fingers will burn my wings away like acid."
How cruel! How laughable
And how exhausting
That I carry inside me
My own destruction
That I am a paper lantern
Which swallowed a holocaust of flames
And realized its mistake only when
Pregnant with immolation.
How exasperatingly final, and how precarious.

It must be so frustrating to be a butterfly,
Isn't that what you meant, sir?
To be so light
To be so gentle
To hold in your hands your little white label grave plate
And know, just know
That hardly anyone will wonder how much the needle hurt
Before they read it.