APRIL

thought i’d kick this off once more with a new poem. it’s not great and i can’t see it ever being particularly good, so i probably won’t do much more with it, but any suggestions are welcome.

butter fingers

You stitched a butterfly across my back.
Lopsided, it blinked in the light as I tugged down
my vest to cover the slip of a gap between it

and my slippy black skirt. You felt the wings
with your thumb, smoothed the threads, said
that I was asymmetric and in the mirror I look

like a different person. I wore bright blue
to distract from my jaw, jutted it at you anyway
and you spent an hour uncurling antennae

below my shoulder blades, sewed lines of jet
across the small of my back. You only pricked the needle
into me when I moved suddenly or you felt

I wasn’t paying enough attention. You made a bird
with your hands then helped me backcomb even
the smallest tufts of hair, and though small clumps

ended up on our fingers, baby feathers,
you didn’t laugh or ask if I’d done this before.
I once said I’d rather be your friend

than nothing at all, but I lied. You’d said
that big hair suited me, but the butterfly winked
at the guys we saw later, said “I know, I know”.

You got my coat. I felt the tip of a needle
in my shoe each time I stepped. Or was it a stone?
I wouldn’t let you walk me home.