To My Butterfly
How do I articulate this helplessness?
These emotions, this unbroken intent?
You.
I am frustrated.
My words feel insufficient.
Cliché expressions turn sticky and saccharine.
I don’t know if you like hearing them.
But whatever warmth rises from them,
I hope, sincerely,
that it reaches you.
So much of my life has felt untethered.
A subconscious isolation.
A distance I cannot explain.
And yet,
I think of you.
Unbidden, inevitable.
Like the song of cicadas in winter.
I once read an alternate definition of autumn—
"A season that can be resisted by embrace alone."
You said you didn’t like autumn.
But I hope,
through us,
through touch,
you might learn to love New York’s autumns.
I burn for the first autumn that belongs to us both.