Lithium, and: Lagoda

Lithium

My father worked as a scientist for many years before retiring to work as a butterfly salesman. He raises them in old Tupperware filled with caterpillars, & he leaves

them on the mantle among the dead relatives. He leaves a dry paper towel sandwiched between the lids & lips of their transparent cupped homes. He feeds them

sugar water, banana, oranges. When they form their warm chrysalides, he moves them to water-pitcher habitats just above the kitchen sink. Every time I wash a dish, I see them growing,

place my ear to their soft vespers, crackling with unshackled surge. I hear him talk on the phone to potential clients: He wants them gone but he won’t just give them away. When they bloom, he waits

with a magnifying glass for the blood to rush through their wing veins. He watches the first flight. This one’s a beauty, he says, then tightens the lid.

Lagoda

At the Whaling Museum in New Bedford, my father and I walk into a life- size ship of what a vessel might have looked like for the long need of whale slaughter. We walk around the deck & duck our heads in the same way any sailor would & just like a real sailor, I too can touch wood & I too can hit my head on the mast. Be careful, use caution as we roam to a Plexiglas table to peer into the quarters below, deathly small, claustrophobic. A group of school children climbs aboard. A chaperone is telling them to stay together but they don’t. One child disappears into the laughter. Another child won’t stop crying. He is afraid of the stairs.