my brother always rips the wings off butterflies in my dreams* / my mother never weeps. she is a woman of hard marble, veins flushing blue across the white of her hands; her hands which are not unlike tree branches, long and elegant. i wish i inherited her hands. my mother is good at bending the bow back, i am good at bending the beautiful / my brother always rips the wings off butterflies in my dreams / my sister is immune to plot twist. she twists the truth out of the thing before it has a chance to deceive her. she does not have the luxury of ignorance. when i speak of fallacy and fable, she speaks of eyes wide open / my brother always rips the wings off butterflies in my dreams / my fathers mouth has never known a cave in. all his teeth are where they should be, lodged into a fist, tearing at the skin scraping over knuckle bone and finger joint. my father can talk a lot. history, politics, the old man in the monitor room of a casino in a dead and dying ghost town. my father never stops / *my brother always rips the wings off butterflies in my dreams