If I could hang just a few plastic sheets
you might never leave the greenhouse.
Instead you would mingle among the leaves
of the coloured plants and the trees that are more
displaced and contained than you are.
Under the glass in the heat of the sun
your dusty eyes transfixed me.
With each blink and flutter they warned me to keep my distance.
If no one had told me their colour
had evolved for the sad purpose of illusions
I would have stood there with you forever,
foolishly holding out an orange peel,
sweating among the trees,
waiting for you
to touch down, if only by accident
on any shuddering length of my outstretched arm.
This hope makes it easy to forget
that the life of a butterfly is short.
You held my hand as we left the show that day,
but I must have missed the signs outside the greenhouse
that would warn me of things to come;
the signs that could explain
the dry mystery of a cocoon,
the memory of your touch on my citrus scented arm,
the false heated paradise
of a greenhouse in October,
and the last lingering glance from the loving
deceptive eyes of a butterfly
show.