In the night I am restless, so I leave my lover alone to toss in our bed and wander the house. I live by the light of the fridge in these early hours, sipping cold milk on my kitchen floor and pouring some into little floral saucers for my cats.
I go outside a lot in the night, in the dark, lay on the grass feeling the dew on the backs of my knees and breathing in oppressive humidity. These summer stars don’t let me sleep. He doesn’t understand why I can’t just turn myself off, why I can’t be still.
He doesn’t know but I sometimes go dancing, music thrumming inside, and let strangers fumble against me, let them push and knock against my jaw. Those small hurts nourish me. He doesn’t know. I asked a woman with a butterfly tattoo once to bite me till we both saw red but she flittered away, eyes awash in iridescence. He doesn’t know this part of me. I can’t show it.
But I can show my love for winged creatures. Butterflies and moths and flying things keep getting trapped on my back deck. The screen doors broke years ago so now it’s just a netted trap. Sometimes I think they’re boiling in their own shell-bodies, unable to escape, to find shade from the beating sun.
I fill teacups with water, try to catch them with a net but they fly higher than I can reach, too anxious to be still, to be loved.
There's a pale green moth that always catches my attention inside the accidental trap. She’s small like my pinky with eyes on her wings like charcoal.
The day I caught her between my hands, she was so frail, flittering like a heartbeat against my palms. I cooed to her, sang Orpheus songs to my sweet love. She was a lovely green thing that could maybe soothe my jagged edges.
But the more I looked at her, the more that restlessness rose within me again, like choking on flowers and milk, and I tightened my fingers, crushing her lovely light.
These are the things I cannot say to him:
Sometimes my jaw aches. I long to close my teeth over flesh, leave bottle-dark bruises on bodies. Instead, I bite my fingers, the backs of my hands, the tender meat of my palm.
Sometimes I’m touch-starved for violence, dark colors washing over me, even in the pale morning.
Sometimes, I am cruel.
And he can't ever know this. He can't ever know. He won't ever know.
So I eat those ripped wings, chewing slowly, and hope he never finds out.
