by Christopher Fields
The butterflies won’t leave Alice alone.
She sits in the doctor’s waiting room Their hands first touch
for five minutes or fifty, hunger a bezoar rolling
across her stomach’s tight knuckles
amid the constant fluttering,
yesterday’s meal shake breakfast long passed.
She thinks of her Marlon departed in August,
or was it September? as they part the milkweed
Finally, they let her in: eyes down on screens,
ears closed to her confusion. Heartbeat shivers
moments too late for hearing. searching for smoldering wings
She is losing weight, her ballast falling away.
She and Marlon were going to move to Mexico
and watch the Monarchs fly in. She’d caught
herself watching the sun crash into horizon’s anvil
every October evening, as she does now that she’s home.
The ventilator sighs and empties his chest
Wings’ rustling grows all around her
and she startles, swats at their whispers,
backpedaling furious, impotent staccato inches.
In spite of everything the picture window
catches her eyes again when her feet snag
Extracting dreams of Michoacán
and she plunges backwards for the last time,
body flexing only as gently as does a falling tree,
crown gathering momentum She clasps his hand
Her mind slowing even as her brain moves faster.
To her this final descent takes over an hour,
fluttering cloak of dusk looming ever closer to her eyes,
deep ember and coal hues fracturing
into thousands of white-spotted wings pressing in
to bear her away in migration.
imagines for both of them
She had been late in leaving
but nature would not be denied now.
Together in the sun at last
Christopher Fields (he/him) edits Neologism Poetry Journal from western Massachusetts. His writing may be found in Meat for Tea, Midwest Quarterly, Coffin Bell, Three Line Poetry, and We Were So Small. He can be found on Twitter/Bluesky.