The woman with butterflies on her face visits late afternoon when sunlight spills onto the floor, ribboning in long, dense curtains. She comes when I’m napping, forearm pressed to temple, my mouth ajar like a greek goddess or sleeping babe. I worry the monarchs and morphos might take flight, struggle through the sunbeams, crawl between my parted lips—but they never leave her.
I knew her once, I think. The outline of her jaw is sharp and familiar like a distant cousin’s or a house in a dream that I’m sure I’ve had—I know I’ve been there—there with the red brick and white peonies I’d shake the ants from before bringing inside.
She knows me, too.
She holds my hand, rubs her thumb across swollen veins, tells me they look like the St. Clair Delta in the thick of spring when the river overflows. Is your name Claire? I ask, and she says sure, it can be Claire today.
Gold pours through the window behind her, lighting her curls. They flutter around her head, across her face, and I remember the butterflies. I close my mouth just in case. She wears a green scarf, delicate like the one I bought in Montrėal all those years ago. I touch my neck, remembering, and she asks if I’m thirsty.
Can I get you anything? she says but I’m enamoured with the perfect cupid’s bow of her upper lip. I touch my own and she asks again if I want a glass of water.
We’ve met before, haven’t we? I stifle the urge to reach for her face, to press my fingertips into her soft lower lids as if they were mine, to sweep the curl from her cheek like a gossamer wing.
We have, she tucks my mottled hand between hers. We have.
Sarah Lynn Hurd is a writer and poet living in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Her writing often explores grief, nostalgia, womanhood, and self-perception, and she has a BA in creative writing and English literature from Grand Valley State University. Stop by sarlynh.com to visit her online.
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