[vc_row row_height_percent=”50″ override_padding=”yes” h_padding=”2″ top_padding=”3″ bottom_padding=”3″ back_image=”56863″ back_position=”center top” overlay_alpha=”0″ gutter_size=”3″ shift_y=”0″][vc_column column_width_percent=”100″ position_vertical=”bottom” style=”dark” overlay_alpha=”50″ gutter_size=”3″ medium_width=”0″ shift_x=”0″ shift_y=”0″ zoom_width=”0″ zoom_height=”0″ width=”1/1″][vc_custom_heading heading_semantic=”h1″ text_size=”fontsize-338686″ text_height=”fontheight-179065″ text_space=”fontspace-111509″ text_font=”font-762333″ text_weight=”700″ text_color=”color-xsdn” sub_reduced=”yes” subheading=”by Triin Paja”]Notes About the Butterflies, the Moth, and the Sadness[/vc_custom_heading][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_empty_space empty_h=”2″][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]I place a small tortoiseshell in a matchbox, beside the three others. It is the saddest matchbox I know. At night, I touch my ear against it. A silence. I believed there was poetry in their nearness. Then they began to die.
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They sleep in winter, closing their wings into dark slits, as a blizzard turns birches into horse manes and frost hangs diamond earrings on branches where crows huddle in sad nearness. Crows, how to ask forgiveness from the butterflies?
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When the crows soar, they are dark handkerchiefs women wave out of train windows. They do not wish to be beautiful. To be beautiful is to be a tree watered with the blood of sacrificed animals. They do not answer me from their shimmering, laughing darkness.
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I have given the funeral boats of the matchboxes to the river.
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I pick a caterpillar from a brass field and feed it long hairy leaves for days, watching it dine until it braids itself a filigreed fishnet, crawls below it, and waits. For wings to sing out of its body.
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The week I hear a river boy I loved, and made love to by the river, died, I hear news about the caterpillar, the drinker moth. It too died, locked in a jar without a sky. I go to the bathroom to weep. Poor moth. Poor boy. My responsibility, my responsibility.
*
In autumn, the gardens wilt into rusted birdcages. This is a heavy light, too much for seeing, and the stones of my eyes cover with lichen. It is spoken the soul leaves the mouth of the dead as a moth. It is autumn. I am in a birdcage. I am in his mouth.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column column_width_percent=”100″ align_horizontal=”align_center” overlay_alpha=”50″ gutter_size=”3″ medium_width=”0″ mobile_width=”0″ shift_x=”0″ shift_y=”0″ z_index=”0″ width=”1/1″][vc_empty_space][vc_separator sep_color=”color-184322″ el_width=”30%”][vc_empty_space][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column column_width_percent=”100″ align_horizontal=”align_right” overlay_alpha=”50″ gutter_size=”3″ medium_width=”0″ mobile_width=”0″ shift_x=”0″ shift_y=”0″ z_index=”0″ width=”1/3″][vc_single_image media=”59934″ media_width_percent=”100″][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][vc_column_text]Triin Paja is the author of three collections of poetry in Estonian and a recipient of the Betti Alver Literary Award, the Juhan Liiv Poetry Prize, and the Värske Rõhk Poetry Award. Her English poetry has received a Pushcart Prize and has appeared or is appearing in Black Warrior Review, The Cincinnati Review, Prairie Schooner, Rattle, TriQuarterly, and elsewhere.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/3″][/vc_column][/vc_row]