Graves.

I slept with the butterfly, allowed it to flap up inside, flutter by hymen, forewing flickering cervix up to vulva; pushing proboscis past anatomical barriers, this butterfly trembled through cardia and corpus, tickled curvature, great and less. Thorax and tarsi prickling pharynx and larynx, a long climb up the vertebral, it dug its palps right into my throat, stole my words.

Laying out the long length of the line of neck for the doctor to take a look, the curve of shoulder to clavicle exposing stretched skin between sternum and scapula, the jugular-pulse an internal lug of blue blood, I am naked.

Baring my shield, an oblong door to the heart of the throat made of steel valour, which – if I had the parts – would bare the peculiar angle of forbidden fruit consumed, I am under the watch of Drs. Galen and Wharton, standing shoulder-close, notebooks in hand.

A pin-prick dig around inside and I am under the microscope – a look-see hide and seek game of who knows what’s next, optically scoping dark corners of neck inferior to expose a constellation of consequential symptoms caused by iodine and tyrosine and thyroxine racing metabolism around and around the trachea rings, so early in the morning.

The butterfly regresses: from flutter to reverse metamorphosis to chrysalis – hard pupa shell tucked tight. Too delicate to touch, the disc of forming butterfly wings running the same length of the tracheae, a yellow-green-red patterned witch who, if let loose, would thief milk late at night.

But this butterfly-lover of mine refuses to let go.

xoxo,

M.L. H’art

Wordplay, Foreplay.

Slipping the strap off her shoulder, wet lips to soft skin: the synecdoche of romanticism a display in parts; button unhinged, zipper widened, clasp unleashed, sock slid low.

More, she whispers. I want more.

The romantic repetition a well-practiced dance, the tick-tock of hands from small of back to upper thigh to backside, the pleasure of rote motor memory serving base instinct.

She sighs. He stops.

Together, they wait; the awkward air of unease seeps in under the slit of the closed bedroom door, filtering through dirty windows on shaded moonlight.

Tugging on the sleeve of how things used to be, she looks up at his sad moon face and says: I know you meant well.

He starts to talk, a stammering trip of words he had little time to rehearse before the big performance.

Kicking at the regret of yesterday, she turns her back and says: You’ve said it all before, in a million different ways.

He reaches for her, a hesitant longing actualized by the shake of his fingers as he brushes her back, leaving fingerprints of where he’s been, where he’ll miss most.

Smoothing the wrinkles of painful memory, she shouts: Why did you listen when I told you stop?

Folding up the fabric of a forgotten yesterday, he picks up his pride, smoothes his shirt over the thumping beat of a weak heart, cups shaking hands over hot ears and says: I didn’t hear you. Didn’t hear what you said. How could I have heard you over all this noise?

xoxo

M.L. H’art