sitting underneath her knee was a lent book of entymology
something about butterflies being caught and pinned
preserved in stasis for the sake of beautiful things
cold crisp leaf wings smoked behind the glass
of a cyanide bottomed killing jar
and in that half read book all she could glean
amongst the bones of writing so lean
was the feeling that you could lie flat and cold
and be a redolent beauty despite the lack of life-

days earlier
the talking therapy had been all right.
hey, there's a ton of treatment these days
medication and conversation and there's no need
to burrow yourself away.
so they talked about feelings
as if they were quietly observing the to and fro
independent little embryos growing opinions of their own-
the indignant insistence that these things,
these emotions have names, signs, triggers
and they begin and they end and curve again-
rising up from the flat of a typeset page.