she was the one you wrote that poem about, the one that got published in a small magazine printed in the south.

the poem was about her back.

the shape of it always reminded you of butterflies. the rounding atop, wide and then the narrowing, near her waist.

she is not yours, not by blood, but you have adopted her, you have raised her as if she was half genetically you.

she is your wife's. she has her hair, her back, her tapering fingers she fingerpaints the walls with.

the sperm donor you two tried to match as close as possible to you. the man had dirty blonde hair, pond scum green eyes. or so the paper claimed.

the paper also claimed he was into literature, an english major.

you wanted to tell the clinic "send me a poem of his," you wanted to say, "does he think of faulkner any? how does he feel about hemingway, welty?"

but you don't.

instead, she says, "his eye color matches yours."

she says, "he's about your height."

she says, "please."

and now she, the girl with the butterfly back, is turning six this summer.

she runs barefoot over the grass, through the sprinkler your mom gave you for her.

at night, before she succumbs completely to sleep, you think, "she has my eyes."

you think, "that's my nose on her face."

you think, "she's as sarcastic as me."

and you know it's not true. there's not a piece, physically, of you that is in her.

after she sleeps you move to the porch with your glass of rum and coke, the ice in it melting and wetting the outside which wets your palm.

and you think of that man out there, somewhere, who did what you couldn't, who brought forth what you just couldn't, no matter how much you loved her mother, no matter how many nights you fell asleep dreaming of this little girl in that rounding belly next to you.

instead, what you do is this: you write a poem about her back.

you write of how she catches the fireflies as the honeysuckle overwhelms the night and this child with her tiny hands cup the light, feeds it into the jars, the mason jars you poked holes in for her pets' air.

watching from her, the porch light behind you, shadowing you next to her, lighting that back, you see the butterfly.

you see the wings in her spreading as she grows older.

the height she will reach, the distance you know she can go.

she turned around then, you write in the poem, writing from memory, she turned around then and hugged you.

ran inside for her nightly bath, taking the jars full of light.

she would bathe in the dark that night, you knew, bathe in the dark with the sporadic, flickering light of those bugs showing her the soap and the water.