PINK BUTTERFLIES

for grandmother

That summer day, sunlight spilled onto the car,

splashing wild asters by the road, their cheeks plumped

as they watched us disappear.

We picked up speed. No one

spoke her name. Stones whipped from the dirt road

beneath a hazy drift of bone ash.

Father touched my shoulder, pointing

at a field of soybeans. When the car pulled up

I got out and felt the beans. Small,

hard, their long green eyes swelling in the pods.

Clouds of pink butterflies swerved and danced. One

clinging to a weedstalk fanned its shivery wings.

Oh, it bore her liver spots, those

stains she cursed. At my first step

it folded up her face and flew.

Bent over, father emerged from a corn field.

Buried well, he said, and soon

thick roots will build her fortress.

Asters the whole way back,

and a gleaming beetle splattered on the windshield.

Father held me. No one spoke her name.