wildscape. literary journal

Pyrrharctia isabella
by Anna Gilmour

The couple arguing behind me on the bus
is deaf. Their hands speak
in tongues. They may be fighting
about anything—unpaid bills, a death
in the family, the woman reading
the palm of another man.
 
I will never know, but I find comfort
in the openness of their expressions.
The woman wears pain
on her mouth like a lipstick.
The man’s eyebrows are angry
caterpillars. Stinging. Bristled.
I wonder if he has begun to fashion
a cocoon for his heart. If hers
is a moth in his grip. If one
of them tastes like mothballs.
 
I think I speak metaphor better
than love. I think I speak entomology
better than love. When I fight,
I am loud. Too open. A fresh mango,
pulp stuck in your teeth.
 
I wonder what it means to fight
silently. I still haven’t learned
how not to write about love.
Fuck mothballs. Fuck metaphor.
This morning I woke up, again,
with your name in my mouth.

about the author // Anna Gilmour

Anna Gilmour (she/her) is a queer psychologist revisiting non-academic writing after a long hiatus. Her work has appeared in ONE ART, New Feathers, and Nowhere Girl Collective. She lives, laughs, and loves in Colorado with her partner and their menagerie of pets. Almost all of her poems include birds.

Instagram: @annagilmour