1. The Invisible Butterfly Some lonely whisper half-caught in the morning light: earth does not support, yet all life is sustained… but it was only an echo. The music had vanished and left the air empty, as empty as Daisuke’s butterfly...
There it is, the bird of paradise with the neverending sword beak –
She swallowed hard and continued to hum to herself and try desperately not to panic. She hugged a cloth-wrapped bundle tightly to her chest. Everything hinged on what was about to happen.
When Marie Rosalind Gupta found her aging cat, Miffy, hunched up and stiff beneath her bedside table, she made a solemn, silent promise: she would do everything to never feel such terrible loss again.
Last night, I traded all the darkness
In my life for great luminous things.
i’ll walk barefoot & remember the grain
on my heels. repeat after me: no love
can last through summer
Where we’ll go, we do not know
through tangled storms and winds that blow. . .
Somewhere inside herself, the singular woman had begun drawing patterns of long-ago flights. Every fall, without looking, she knew when the geese left their breeding grounds.
From spring tide to spring tide. I grow lush. I grow hidden.
The lonely ruins had once been a thriving textile factory and Nick’s place of employment. He imagined clouds billowing from the now collapsed smokestacks, pumping the soul into the city. Life made sense back then.