Dragonfly Girl

You never did like butterflies--
too dainty,
too delicate,
too fragile.

You told me their wings
would chip off into the wind.
Just like the shards of hearts
Scattered all over your little garden now,
they didn't hold you up
Like the immaculate masts
of veins thrumming with power, thundering across the skies
leaving the rest of the world
to snuggle under their wide expanse of shadow.
What did you mean to smother us with?
Tenderness? Fear? Grief?
Nobody gingerly treads through the blades of grass anymore.
What you left behind is too overwhelming --
everything else is a tiny papercut.

The nicks you let take your place,
there are thousands of them now.
They come in droves everyday
and they never fully close --
they can bleed us to death with you too.
Maybe that's the kind of peace we need
so we can let our bated breaths out
to finally be at ease.

So how fair is it that you stole life
from those of us cursed with this ground?
You were the dragon,
never the princess.
A fire sparkled within you,
igniting a spirit, a defiance
and a world that never should have even been
possible to imagine.
All from the gauzy dragonfly wings
you insisted adorn your back.
Who needs a rainbow
when you trace the world with your flame?

You had this signature,
that would never leave an actual permanent mark--
no way to hold you to what you say,
to who you were.
But everyone knew it was you.
You'd scorch the place just to show
you were there--
you made your mark.

It was so you.
overcoming the knights that came
in torrents and waves.
After all, what were they
just tin cans
waving around metal toothpicks as
distant cousins to the forest you
killed? or lit?

You took your final stand.
The tin cans finally caught up
and boxed you in
a prison of tubes, machines and IV needles.

Our hearts became the abhorred butterfly wings
in frantic hope to get you back out there.
It wasn't supposed to be this kind of ending
with your wings curled up and barely,
just barely, grasping on.

There was nothing left to hold.
There wasn't enough fresh air?--
just not enough sky--
to keep you going--
to keep your flame alive.
The steady light gradually sputtered out.
A candle's small ember on a dying wick.

You lie there
tucked in snugly with your dragonfly wings.
Gently dreaming
of dragons and kings.
We wait for nothing
as you ascend to the skies
because your dragonfly wings took you
to your home in the infinite night.