To Keep Us Gentle

We were told

touching butterfly wings

would remove their dust,

their scales and

stop them

from flying. We

were told

swearing was

the quickest way to become

truck drivers: tobacco-thick lips,

eyes under-slept, red-vesseled and

road-fixed. We

were told

to hold onto, stay close to our imaginations like 

they are up there with all of the greatest things 

we can love, all the are greatest things we can

possibly imagine, and,

we were told

that if we cross our eyes for too long,

they would become permanently stuck looking

inward, even if we claim innocence, claim that we 

had a butterfly land on the bridge of our nose, and 

we were only 

trying

to keep gentle.