Oh, Mr. Prufrock,
Pinned and wriggling on that wall.
Sometimes I wonder what those painted butterflies feel.
Sometimes I think
I know.
Measured with stretched bits of thread,
Taut and clean and precise.
Labeled with little placards
Like neat white grave markers.
How macabre, that we must
Skewer
Lovely things.
Define them,
Limit them,
Destroy them to preserve them.

I
Am formulated too.
I have felt the cold cut of it in my chest.

Behind that glass, up on that wall,
I wonder what that royal blue, feather-light creature felt
Just before the lights went out
With a bulbous, giant eye peering down
Carefully impaling it.
Those shiny black legs--- so fragile!---
Struggling.

Oh, Mr. Prufrock
I grow old as well.

I wonder if they ever feel---
Those winged acquisitions of ours---
The crumbling fragility of their beauty
Of their bodies.
Bodies that a stiff breeze can knock asunder,
Bodies that a sewing needle
Can unravel- I am OLD.
Your words stick me through
With who I am,
A sword the size of a pin,
But I am powder light
I am
Paper thin and I am so
Absurdly trapped--- A soul of supernovas
Held inside the tentative shell
Of a monarch butterfly
King of
"If you touch me the oils from your fingers will burn my wings away like acid."
How cruel! How laughable
And how exhausting
That I carry inside me
My own destruction
That I am a paper lantern
Which swallowed a holocaust of flames
And realized its mistake only when
Pregnant with immolation.
How exasperatingly final, and how precarious.

It must be so frustrating to be a butterfly,
Isn't that what you meant, sir?
To be so light
To be so gentle
To hold in your hands your little white label grave plate
And know, just know
That hardly anyone will wonder how much the needle hurt
Before they read it.