Originally appeared in CHASM MAGAZINE in 1996
Kafka kissed me just before I woke —
not a hot, wet, romantic kiss,
but a dry wisp of a kiss, barely a touch
like a Lepidoptera landing lightly,
flapping to dry its freshly unfurled wings
before flying off, free at last
of the casket-like hull that once
cocooned around its insect thorax.
I wondered if his final freedom felt
like an unlatched gate to an inmate
who’d been locked away from the outside world
with its ticking clocks and beating hearts,
passing time without his presence missed at all.
Somewhere, fingers drum behind cell walls
that rarely release a butterfly.
Moths, perhaps, along with fleeing jackals.
Gayla Chaney's poetry has appeared in Rio Grande Review, Hurricane Review, Louisiana Literature, StorySouth, and other literary journals. She lives and writes in central Texas.