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)

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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.