Anna Schechter - the whole ride home from the butterfly house
she makes small wind where she pulses
on my arm.
i’m a flower with magenta petals.
the whole ride home, i kiss
my eyelashes to my arm hair.
and can’t quite replicate the hesitant
brush of spindle legs.
in the back seat, i hold my hand
up to the blue glass and i
squint through the stretched skin
between my thumb and first finger.
i’m orangey see-through with tiny veins.
my hand is a hatching chick under the incubator
light. i’m almost as iris as the mosaic
wings. i’m sun warm.
i want to pollinate.
from the front seat, my grandma sings.
from the front seat, my mom feeds me animal
crackers. i lick them to make
sugar water.
Edited by Jamie Chen (@bjorqcute)

ANNA SCHECHTER is senior at Sarah Lawrence College, where she studies writing and literature. Her work has been published by The SLC Review, love and squalor magazine, and The Isis Magazine. Last spring, she was awarded proxime accessit winner of Wadham College’s Rex Warner Prize for her short story “The Swap”. You can usually find her walking her dogs or curled up with a book.