Like Siberia

by Melanie Browne

he pulls the
butterfly clip from
her hair,

and watches
as it flies
out of reach

A Monarch,
she tells him
and turns
to watch as
he stares into
the reflecting pool,
wounds
not yet healed.

A shaman might
call this a moment
of transcendence,

after a soul
lost for a
thousand years
in a Psychological
Siberia,

shovels out
of the frost,
only to suffocate
in a swarm of mosquitos