you ate butterflies for breakfast because you said you wanted to know what my anxiety felt like and i told you that i didn’t want sympathy, i wanted to be able to throw up the wings. you said maybe i had flowers growing in my stomach and that i should be happy that at least the bees hadn’t stung their way through my skin. you convinced me that my veins were laced with pollen and that sometimes blooming had to be painful because you were breaking your roots. you told me about how you swallowed one too many watermelon seeds when you were a kid and you didn’t spit out the sunflower seeds and you were always worried that the neighborhood birds would end up trying to peck you to death. there’s no vines growing in your stomach now but that’s never stopped you from talking to pigeons like you’re speaking a secret language. i think we both have a fascination with wings and sometimes at night i touch your shoulder blades and tell you that yours would have been the color of ivory with green tips and dots in the dead center that are as black as bird’s eyes. we turn it into a game. some days mine are lighter than lavender, throbbing and pulsing with a cotton candy pink. other days they’re a dark blue, clouding up with grey around the edges. yours always stay consistent, ivory, laced in gold.