Her kidneys are not like butterfly wings, a symmetrical pairing;

not two tidy red beans

but one long horseshoe,

conjoined twin organs

hugging her together,

hiding her from CAT scans,

from the probes of doctors.

Her heart flutters

out of sync, the press of unseen wings against

ventricles making her pulse

skitter, her lungs lunge

one after the other, working

to pull oxygen from starved blood

that cannot stop itself rushing, rushing.

Blue bruises butterfly beneath her skin

moving like storm clouds

from ankle to thigh;

bruises from brushing against a piece of furniture,

from a too-tight embrace, from pressing a book

too hard to her chest. She mashes a thumb

against her arm to watch the print darken.

Inside her they find a twinned uterus —

no wineskin, no pink balloon —

instead, two palms thrusting out

repeating “No,”

two wings ragged and tired of blood,

interrupting cycles of moon and tide,

two doors closing.

Jeannine Hall Gailey (WA)  is the author of one collection of poems, Becoming the Villainess (Steel Toe Books, 2006). Her poems have been featured on Verse Daily and The Writer's Almanac, and appear in The Iowa Review, Columbia Poetry Review, and The Seattle Review.