We’re This and We’re That, Aren’t We?

Now that the theoretical physicist slash cosmologist has explained to me, has laid out in clean even rows of logic how every atom in my body arrived from a star, a star that blasted apart, and the atoms of my left hand originated from a different sun than my right, I can shine. I can go dark recalling how my grandfather made the vertical blinds rattle when he shoved my grandmother into them. Startled in the yard, I turned to that sound, from the flower bed my eyes were held by the swaying blinds. It took a while for each to line up perfectly straight again, to tell myself she slipped. Only then could I return to stalking the butterflies. My right hand was quick: reach and pinch. I had so many soft wings that summer between my thumb and index, so many of them skewered on cactus needles. I was a kid. I was cruel slash gentle. He was cruel slash gentle. He had witnessed my destroying and I saw across his creased face empathy for them. After his scolding I placed one dead one inside the white envelope of a flower. Under the sun it glowed. Under the moon, more glowing.