Missed me, butterfly

Prisons have a smell. No, it isn’t despair, or shit, or even cigarettes. It’s the plain ordinary smell of boredom. The smell of one day following another with nothing disturbing the peace and no new scents to mix things up.

I’m a new smell. I smell of perfume and scented bathwater. I smell of sex. Hey, everyone, come have a sniff of this. Their eyes follow me as I saunter past their cells, one guard on my left and one on my right. I make eye contact sometimes, if they’re lucky, and I may even smile. But though I may smile and nod and I could even stop to share a word or two…I can feel nothing for these ordinary vermin.

“Hey, hot lips!” someone shouts. No different to walking down the street. I despair of men.

The governor follows behind me like an anxious little bird, muttering about orthodoxy and procedure. Fuck him. Fuck his procedure.

Ahead is a locked gate. We stop, words are exchanged, the governor scratches his name on some forms, nobody wants to admit they allowed me to do this. But I lifted my skirts and paid what was asked. Let it never be said that I failed to pay what was asked.

“If you weren’t a friend ‘o the governor, we wouldn’t be doin’ this,” says one of my guards. I smile. A friend indeed.

The man I love is in solitary confinement. They open the door and he looks up. At first he doesn’t recognise me. But then, he wouldn’t. I was nine when he told me I was pretty, and I told him if he kissed me, that must mean he loves me, and he said yes. Yes I do, little butterfly. Then there had been the blood, but we won’t dwell on that. And I am a woman grown now. Oh yes, grown indeed.

“Oh fuck,” he says eventually. “It’s you.”

I nod. I smile. I am a butterfly. I am not here. “I miss you,” I say. I can feel the guards trading uneasy glances.

He stares at me stupidly. I want to punch him for that.

“Do you miss me?” I ask. He only blinks. “May we be alone?” I ask the guard. He shakes his head. I expected as much.

He is a china doll on the floor. I am an ogress. I am the way and the light and the truth. He is the husband I could have had if they hadn’t taken him away. In my bag are pictures of what could have been; we look so beautiful in our finery. I wear white and his eyes are mocking.

It should have been so different, but it isn’t. It doesn’t matter. I can create whole worlds in my head. I flesh them out like adding so much clay to a pot. Small details to create something big enough that I can lose myself.

“Do you still love me?” I ask. His mouth hangs open like a flap of dead skin. Like a fish. I ask him again. My patience is trickling away. “You said you loved me.”

“Stockholm syndrome,” a guard mutters. I don’t know what that is. I want to burn Stockholm to the ground.

“Weirdest type I’ve ever seen,” his companion says. I bite back a scream. This is not a syndrome, I am simply his butterfly, creating chaos in this neat little ordered world they forced him into. He is looking at me with hangdog eyes. A dirty suspicion is preying on my mind.

“Tell me…” I say, “were there others?”

The world passes. “Yes,” he says.

“Seven counts of…well, you know what he did,” supplies the governor. I grit my teeth. I know what he did. I did not wish to know this.

My face doesn’t change. My face never changes, but I turn on my heel and walk away, the governor fluttering behind me.

With all he did to me, he could at least have been faithful.