I’m looking for the beauty that lives in the pinpricks:
a single red spot that fills my fingerprints
with rivulets, or the rivulets of oil that run
in rainbow corrosion into the drain—
my father told me I was growing up
the day I first watched a butterfly flutter
across my field of vision in fits and starts,
pulling my eyes away from the ocean
and into its orbit, a moment I’ve followed
to bluebells and rivers, into the constellations,
and finally, into this moment,
the one where I am trying to tell you what it is
I am seeing when I see the shine in your eyes.

By Heidi Turner