Monday Poems: "Butterfly Dream" - Jenni Fallein

(for Carolee)

You float up from your body
a paper-doll cloud of yourself
translucent blue
breaking up
like windshield glass
into perfect shapes
all butterflies

I have hear of this before
how butterflies
hordes of them
really came
to the funeral
of the young man
with pancreatic cancer
or hovered inside the bathroom
when Marina's lover
hung himself
or how the Auschwitz children
drew them
on the walls of gas changers

It is only a dream
still, we get
your grandson's letter
thank you for the transformer
in first grade block print
and his drawing
just for you
a plump red butterfly

*    *     *

Jenni Fallein is a writer and painter based in Dillon, Montana. She is a member of the Bentgrass Poetry Troupe, and teaches poetry workshops at the Elkhorn Correctional Facility for women. "Butterfly Dream" was published in her collection, If Beauty Were A Spy.