Walking Stick

By Pamela Manasco

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My aunt had a frame in her bedroom, three t-pinned 
butterflies flattened under glass, and I coveted it 
until one day I caught a real one, a black swallowtail. 
Its wings rose and fell like clouds. After it flew away
flakes of skin, thin as mica, painted my fingers. 
I read in a book that I'd killed it, or good enough;
it wouldn't survive because I'd touched it. 
I didn't know then all touch does is wipe away 
the camouflage. Take the mimicry some moths display,
an extra set of eyes painted on their wings, as if 
a tanager will change its mind & swerve to dive elsewhere 
because of those unblinking pupils. Take the walking stick, 
Phasmatodea, the first I'd ever seen outside a picture. 
Pumping gas before work the movement registered, 
and a whittled brown leaf resolved into the insect 
climbing the black hose of an unattended diesel pump. 
Long past the click of my full tank I watched it explore, 
wondering if it had hitched a ride on someone else's car, 
if it could blend its small body into the pump somehow, 
if it could find enough food to survive, how long their short 
lives last. Ten days later a psychologist diagnoses 
severe depression. She's conservative with medication, 
she says, but not in my case. I get to choose: maybe 
Celexa this time, Effexor? She sells hope a different drug 
will help. I see the walking stick as I left it, I see myself 
as the doctor must, pinned open, heavy weight darkening glass. 

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Pamela Manasco is a poet living in Madison, Alabama. Her poetry has been published in New South Journal, Rust + Moth, Palooka, descant, and others, and she has work forthcoming in The Midwest Quarterly, Two Hawks Quarterly, Canyon Voices, and others.

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