rainbow parachute, the modest death of butterflies
 & our hearts against a feather

i don't remember much about
elementary school-- it exists
only as a series of nonlinear
narratives
strung together with 
summers as big as my mouth could
hold-- full of blueberries
& watermelon & spitting
cherry pits off the side
of a brick wall in the park--
there was of course first
grade when we all grew butterflies
& let them go in the courtyard &
i wondered if it would be possible
to tape little letters to their legs 
as messages for whoever found them--
i would later learn that most
butterflies do not eat once
they emerge from their
chrysalis-- a water-color spattered
decrescendo of life
wing flutter until
she would fall as silent as 
a pressed flower--
we made our own sarcophagus 
out of clay in what i think
was 4th grade & mine had the head
of thoth (an ibis) 
because he's the one
who weighs your heart against
a feather
when you float down the river--  
& in 3rd grade we all made indian names
as our earliest act of colonialism--
mine being 'blue feather'
& we pretended the classroom 
was an iroquois long house-- a bound
fire made of construction paper
heated the whole room--
i forgot about picture day
nearly every year & sometimes
accidentally wore
the shirt with the hole in the collar--
recess a caterpillar tree & 
fifth grade girls learning to 
watch the boys play football &
learning how to kiss under the yellow
slide-- hang upside
down from the monkey bars like
trapezes artists looking
for a glimpse of butterfly flight--
of all the moments there
is nothing i'm more nostalgic for
than the rainbow parachute
from gym class--
i was the only way i had encountered 
to thoroughly pause time-- no
one was big when the gym
teacher got out the parachute--
we were all small children who
knew we were small children
& in the moment we only wanted to
be small small children who 
were allowed to hide under the 
eclipse of the rainbow parachute--
all hands gripping around the circle--
a merry-go-round of color--
pinwheel out the window-- we all
lifted up the sides
as one bunch of children who
would come to forget each others names--
who would get our periods next year
up the hill in middle school & mistake
ourselves for dying--
who would never come this
close
to touching one another but
for a moment we butterfly flew-- 
& pulled the parachute down around
us to make a dome-- we were 
a colony of obscured sun--
a kaleidoscope igloo--
we all had done this before & we
all knew the sky we had made
would fall & yet for a brief
inhale of the fabric clouds we
could see of each other across
the great lung full of water color wind--
we were all a package-- a dumpling--
& as we let the sky droop
& our colony flatten we were 
draped in the parachute--
we landed each all alone--
poked our head out from the swishy
fabric & begged the gym teacher to
let us do it again & again 
& again 
until we were in fifth grade
& the sky was closer to
our hands & the clouds were just
another type of pillow
& the walk up the hill didn't make our
legs hurt &
when we pulled down the parachute
we thought only of how desperate we
were for a summer-- any summer
day-dreamed of spattering
ourselves like watercolor
& filling our mouths with watermelon
seeds again to spit out
into the back yard
& silently wish they would
all take root & grow a garden--
pull the parachute over
the sun like an eyelid with me--
we can be a lung together & we
can pretend our hearts are 
light enough to be blown away
as easy as dried butterfly wings--
light enough to float high 
above a feather
when the god with the head of
the ibis weighs our hearts
in the kiln room.