perhappened mag
issue 11: HOMECOMING
peacock, orange tip,
red admiral, holly blue
BECKI HAWKES
CW: depression, suicidal ideation, mentions of dementia
Hello again, world: I am here
for the butterflies. My shins are bitten
and bloody, sucked raw by thorns and nettles
as I pull myself through knavish greenery
phone in hand, arms festooned with stickyweed
eyes on the bright speckled prize. Yesterday
I chased a tremulous white butterfly
across a road and through a car park, held
my breath when it finally rested, willed my eyes
into telescopes, begged them to show me
the underwing, whose pattern
would tell me exactly what it was. I’ve tried
to explain why the names matter: why logging
each species (and yes of course
there is an app for that)
is a small act of defiance, a fragile stand
against a breaking Earth, a broken us. In dreams
I track Large Tortoiseshells and Coppers
across oceans, watch them vanish
into light, wake up sobbing with loss. I am here
for the pollinated pauses, the jagged-edged moments
between the moments,
for Comma, after Comma, after Comma,
and I have seen people I love
unroot themselves, forget my name, forget
their own names, recognise nothing
and I have lain in a bed for a full weekend
cocooned in my own sweat and sorrow
wanting to die. But the first Brimstone of the year
never comes when I expect it: it is never
the preened garden, the tended quiet park
but the mess at the side of the road, fly-tipped
and unloved, where the first one dances out
and makes everything sweet and fierce as sun.
I call them like an army:
Peacock, Orange Tip, Red Admiral, Holly Blue
because this, now this is a love poem.
This is the naming of wings.
for the butterflies. My shins are bitten
and bloody, sucked raw by thorns and nettles
as I pull myself through knavish greenery
phone in hand, arms festooned with stickyweed
eyes on the bright speckled prize. Yesterday
I chased a tremulous white butterfly
across a road and through a car park, held
my breath when it finally rested, willed my eyes
into telescopes, begged them to show me
the underwing, whose pattern
would tell me exactly what it was. I’ve tried
to explain why the names matter: why logging
each species (and yes of course
there is an app for that)
is a small act of defiance, a fragile stand
against a breaking Earth, a broken us. In dreams
I track Large Tortoiseshells and Coppers
across oceans, watch them vanish
into light, wake up sobbing with loss. I am here
for the pollinated pauses, the jagged-edged moments
between the moments,
for Comma, after Comma, after Comma,
and I have seen people I love
unroot themselves, forget my name, forget
their own names, recognise nothing
and I have lain in a bed for a full weekend
cocooned in my own sweat and sorrow
wanting to die. But the first Brimstone of the year
never comes when I expect it: it is never
the preened garden, the tended quiet park
but the mess at the side of the road, fly-tipped
and unloved, where the first one dances out
and makes everything sweet and fierce as sun.
I call them like an army:
Peacock, Orange Tip, Red Admiral, Holly Blue
because this, now this is a love poem.
This is the naming of wings.
Becki Hawkes lives in London, UK, loves running and butterflies, and has had poems published in Ink, Sweat and Tears, The Shore, Rust + Moth, Brittle Star, Pulp Poets Press, Crow & Cross Keys, Little Stone Journal, Lunate Fiction and Wrongdoing Magazine (forthcoming). Twitter: @BeckiH_678.