In Which We Pay Tribute to Swallowtails

The sinkhole gaped like a hollowed-out eye. Mudslides had coated it glossy. You could see it from the top of the hill if you squinted. Get down so I can see better, your sister said. We did so. She stood with one foot on each of our backs.

Swallowed up whole. 

Your sister knew the girl from Sunday school. Always late. Glasses askew. Hair like—see. Fingers moving away from her head like cursive.

What’s askew? You never knew when to feign knowledge—as when, years later, you marched up to the lunch table where the richest girls sat, their backs to us, laughing. What? you asked. What? 

A little off. 

What? 

We wondered how deep the girl had sunk before they found her. If there was mud in her mouth. If her mouth had been open. If the mud had made a perfect cast of tooth and ridge, like retainer molds, which had made every one of us gag.

And would she be entombed? We had seen the week before, in school, a black swallowtail emerging from its chrysalis. We expected it to soar gracefully away from the cocoon, but it clung to that old skin, dangling.

Look at it, someone said. Hanging on for dear life. 

And then it fell. We thought it had been born knowing otherwise.

Papilio polyxenes. Who would remember its real name?

But we could still climb upon one another to see the sinkhole—we could wash the soil off in the shower—we could report to our parents its size but not its pull, for we believed we had not yet gone under.