Man-Butterfly

She remembered him when he had no wings,
was just the epidermis of a thought she could own.
She bought him expensive shoes, a size too large
and he'd stumbled into her at intersections.
She thought he had died in a car accident,
leaked toxic substances into the air.
Became a karma of clap and fling. Now, in her room,
rehearsing an erotic arabesque for a potential victim
with only one true leg, she sees the man-butterfly
inside the window. Outside, one of her father's
tractors rams against ancient rock, stubborn dirt,
the others are sleeping out of gear. Or maybe the men are.
Chasing the man-butterfly across the room,
following the shadows of his crazy flight across the ceiling,
she catches him in her bare feet. He was trying to imitate
a swallowtail, but she pronounced him as a mourning cloak.
She whispers to him as he struggles against her cupped hands,
"I'm too evil to ever have children. Everything I catch or deliver,
I'll just destroy." She keeps the man- butterfly in a glass jar.
There is a notch in the lid so nothing will become breathless
before harvest. In another room, she is making love to a destroyer
of women, someone who can only hatch alibis and innuendos.
Her younger sister, who lives in three separate worlds, in love
with the past tense of each of them, opens the jar and glues
her sex-eggs to the man-butterfly's wings. He falls, flutters,
gathers his gust. A strong breeze sweeps through the window.
In this way, she'll know that her children will fly.