This poem, featured at Capturing Fire, the national queer poetry slam, was written by Chris August

Chris August

My mother is looking for a suitable way

Of celebrating her sixtieth birthday—

She’s thinking maybe a tattoo.

She called me at two o’clock this morning

To see what I knew about butterflies

Because somewhere during the day

One flew into her house

And became trapped.

Confused and out of place,

It sought the shelter of her garden window

And she looking for a way of helping it

Without hurting it.

My mother has spent her entire life

Believing in signs,

So she knows this butterfly means something.

She has spent the past five years

Believing in rebellion,

So she’s thinking this butterfly might be her tattoo.

She has spent the day researching them online,

So she is already familiar with the larvae and the chrysalis,

The triumphant emergence from seclusion

After months of struggle and growth

She tells me,

I didn’t realize how fragile they were;

If you touch their wings, they can’t fly anymore

And they die.

So she is looking for the gentlest way of leading her butterfly out.

Before she called she was praying to Saint Francis,

The patron saint of animals.

There is no patron saint of gay sons.

So when I came out to mother five years ago,

She was lost.

A lifetime in the stubborn cocoon of Catholicism had taught her

That sometimes you don’t have anyone to pray to.

When I asked her if she was alright with this,

She didn’t know.

So I spent months

Delicate and disoriented

Flying against the walls of a house I didn’t understand

And she beat her fingers together in prayer

Like wings

As she asked her god what to do.

And the answer came like pinpricks of light

Through the walls her confusion had built around her,

Her answer

Was Love him.

And she did,

Loved me like her heart

Could beat thin fiber

To weave nets that would protect me forever,

Loved me like a lifetime in her lord’s teachings

Had inspired acceptance and understanding

Like they are supposed to.

And now, when she talks to me about getting tattoos,

I’d like to think that she’s saying

That she’s learned that sometimes

You have to poke a hole in the side of the rules

In order for something beautiful to emerge

And that one day, she will march boldly

Into the parish of St. Margaret’s Church

Wearing something sleeveless

To show off the gorgeous,

Purple winged creature

Emblazoned on her shoulder blade

And just wait for someone to question her

So she can tell them,

Yeah, I wear wings on my skin

And I have earned them

From sixty years of being told that people like my son

Are hellbound,

Six decades of believing

That my divinity could be quantified

And however little you may understand it,

Whatever I may choose to put on it,

This skin covers hands

That have cradled the most delicate of souls,

Lifted them up,

Whispering a prayer that my love would never hinder their wings,

And, with a mercy born only of faith,

Let them fly.

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