For Anatomy & Physiology, the instructor took off the top half

of the human skull and put it to the side so that we could see

inside, him pointing, all of us leaning in, his sulky voice: "See,
the cerebellum, it looks just like a butterfly; see the wings"

and I thought then how the faintest quiver of a butterfly’s wings 
in some boondock region across the equator can turn the sky

a mean drunk in Texas, the weather or whatever
we rely upon to love us can turn and turn, clumsy as a boy 

whose hands launch at any anything soft, lunge 
from the cage of himself, wanting 

to hurt the object of his love.

Sharmila Voorakkara received her MFA from the University of Virginia. Her first collection of poems, Fire Wheel, was published by the University of Akron Press.

Ron Riekki’s books include Blood/Not Blood Then the Gates (Middle West Press, poetry), My Ancestors are Reindeer Herders and I Am Melting in Extinction (Loyola University Maryland’s Apprentice House Press, hybrid), Posttraumatic (Hoot ‘n’ Waddle, nonfiction), and U.P. (Ghost Road Press, fiction).  Right now, Riekki’s listening to Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Sessions.