There’s a butterfly clasp on my bedside table. It fell out of my pillowcase last night and fluttered down onto freshly washed sheets the way that butterflies do, especially once they’re dead: like an exit wound with no entry or the final stop on abandoned train tracks. Have you ever ridden a train to the end of the line? Have you ever stayed there, alone and quiet, as the rest of the world finds its way home, while the screeching metal on metal drags you, flesh inside metal, you without a choice, you without a plan, you unbloody, you raw and aching, you still breathing to the same place it gets quiet night after night after night after I knew it was dead. The butterfly clasp, that is. I knew it was dead because I’ve always worn the kind of hoops that have no clasp, no frail little wings to keep them alive in the air. They hang, clinging onto flesh for dear life the way I cling to any body foolish enough to get within range until I find myself alone with a bloody scrap of meat and skin, having clawed right through the bicep, the thigh, the stomach, the throat that slipped in close.
An earring clasp I pick from my sheets and keep on my bedside table.
Featured photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash.
