Aphea
by Jennifer MacLure
One hand.
One right hand.
One right hand that moves like a bird, fluttering, settling on a branch,
like an eagle,
like a caterpillar, crawling across the page it writes upon,
like a butterfly.
One butterfly,
fluttering, flying, landing on a dry Cyprus branch.
One more hand-
mine.
Resting on a dry Cyprus branch,
unspecial,
asleep.
One fluttering butterfly hand.
One landed-on hand.
Two hands.
Spark-
ember-
alive.
...
One thick hand.
In mine-intruder.
Thick, round, caterpillar fingers.
Like caterpillars, but inert,
not sleeping but lifeless,
not like fruit seeds at all, not like flower buds,
not like the sluggish body of an oyster within its shell,
quietly creating the pearl.
Nothing like that.
Not even dead-
More like death,
death-giving, death-loving.
Like a butterfly forcing its way backward in the life-cycle,
pulling in its wings, losing its flight to willful atrophy,
or like a great thick hand, clasping the butterfly wings,
crushing them, reversing the life-cycle by brute force,
out of envy.
Sparkless flesh, lifeless mass,
forcing itself between my living fingers.
turning me to stone.
I turn myself to stone-
you cannot touch my flesh.
I replaced it with shade-flesh.
You touch stone-fingers,
not my fingers,
with your willful caterpillar hands-
your pearl-less dead oyster lips.
Minos, whispers the left-behind shadow of my departure.
My bones rattle in the defiant emptiness, echoing hollow-
My flesh is my own.
....
I am looking at the fleshy part of my hand,
between my thumb and first finger.
It has been there my whole life.
I never noticed it.
Your butterfly hand landed on it, for less than a split second,
the shortest eternity, the quietest universe that has ever existed and fallen to oblivion
in the blink-not even a blink-
the tiniest twitch of an eye.
Like an infant, I looked at my own hand for the first time.
It was a miracle, my hand.
I blinked-I looked up, and I saw it reflected in your eyes.
In them, my hand was a miracle-
the unlikeliest turn of phrase,
a dissonant chord that says love like no words.
It's not that I hadn't seen before;
it's not that I hadn't felt.
I saw, I felt, but I never noticed until that spark
that passed between your butterfly hand and mine
that my flesh could flutter and fly.
My hand made that spark in your eyes,
in my hand,
in our hands' reflection in your eyes.
Like a fire, I can burn.
I am matter that lives-
I live-I matter-
I am the electricity that lightning is made of-
I am the lightning that connects
your butterfly finger with the soft part of my hand
between my first finger and my thumb.
...
Your dead caterpillar hand on mine makes my cheeks burn.
Not with embarrassment,
not with shame,
not with desire-not even with a shade of desire-
but with angry effort; combustion of energy as I force myself not to feel.
My un-stone body resists paralysis-
my lightning self rebels against unnatural atrophy.
My cheeks burn with unspent energy;
and with jarred-up frustration as I constantly, consciously, struggle
submerged in the deepest waters of my half-conscious mind
never to look at dead caterpillars and see butterflies-
to see, clear-eyed, opposites for opposites-
never to look at the butterfly's half-dead, death-loving twin and see freedom, flight;
never to look at the butterfly and see, instead, its death-twin.
My cheeks burn fire red.
...
Your cheeks are red, inflamed,
as my eyes pass over them
like seagulls over open water.
The tips of your ears are also afire
as you whisper into mine-
how quickly the electricity flows between my ears and your lips,
my eyes and your flame-tipped ears-how powerfully we conduct!
Huddled in the eye of a wild storm of electricity,
defiant,
our eyes meet.
You reveal yourself to me,
like a butterfly spreading its wings.
Simple words uttered,
but it is you-
the pearl, the fruit-seed,
your greatest secret, yourself.
(For a millisecond, you are open to me.
For the blink of eye, you are mine to create or destroy-
your unshelled self is mine to break upon my stone.)
Like an tight-jawed oyster,
I will keep it.
...
Your eyes, like serpents,
slither on my flesh,
snake around my wrists,
lash their tongues against my thighs-
Beady black eyes like black pythons,
weaving me in like a web,
ensnaring me like a net.
My skin sizzles, burns black,
under your python poison,
thrown upon me carelessly, like acid,
with your black eyes.
Your whispered words are salt in my sizzling skin,
flicked in my wound like a finger flicks away a fly-
but self-conscious, aiming to please,
like an arm tosses a dry stick to a starving dog.
What did you say?
I heard only the sizzle-burn
of your boiling words crawling under my skin,
further within, popping as they reach my fire core,
filled to the brim with nothingness,
flowing emptiness into my stone-shadow self.
...
In the deepest, most underwater shadows of my self,
there is a pearl.
It is me-
the fruit-seed, the pith, the rugged center that cannot break.
I want to show you-
guide you in, in, further in,
past skin, past tissue, past cell
to self.
I want you to see me closely,
to be seen like a flower blooming,
to look, clear-eyed, eye to eye,
to see together in the rugged, veil-less core.
Lift back the gauze-carefully-
paper-thin, my sole protection-
close your eyes-
the slightest sight could break-
Minos!
