butterfly sanctuary to be bulldozed for Trump's border wall

when you die you disband into 
a flock of butterflies & you get
to decide what kind you want to be: 
monarch or swallow-tail?

i would pick monarch because of how
wide their wings can get:
4 great inches.
fluttering between the other fragments
of myself i would re-learn how
to sing in the body of an insect.

the word for "butterfly" in
Spanish is mariposa & i learned
that in 7th grade Spanish class.
i would write it in cursive
at the top of the paper 
over & over like the beat of wings.

i've been wanting to drive down
to the boarder for years now,
the savoir complex in me,
but this is the first time i 
know what i would do. 

before the sanctuary is gone
i could teach all the people
trying to cross how to fall apart
into butterflies & re-assemble.

i would shout:
monarch or swallow-tail?
& fall into the desert to 
show them how i do it. 

if that doesn't work my back up
plan is to show them how to 
be the size of ants, load
them onto the back
of the butterflies to fly
past boarder patrol vehicles.

would they take to searching
butterflies then? pinching 
their orange wings & inspecting
their abdomens for passengers.

they would, they would
i know they would.

i don't have an answer 
& everything i say turn 
into butterflies & even
the butterflies with their view
of the Rio Grande want to disband.

when butterflies die
they fall apart into humans &
they don't get to decide
what kind they want to be:
this side of the wall or the other?

i'll stay here, i say,
because i'm not a butterfly.