Aesthetics

we must know a force greater than our weaknesses —Jean Toomer like most boys, ignorant or fearful of beauty, we pinned back the wings of butterflies and plucked off their legs, and watched and watched them tumble from leaves like pinecones wheeling from rooftops; and we laughed. we crumbled alka-seltzer for the pigeons, “those flying rats” my mother’s ex-husband once called. their bodies floundering like toys flung from a window. white foam from their mouths stark against the asphalt framing their artless convulsions and we laughed with open-mouths until tears dripped from our chins and our throats were raw with the rightness of god.