Maddie draws a person, ten fingers and toes.
Eyebrows, she tells me with the assurance
of a kindergartener, make all the difference ,
and, with the light stroke of a butterfly winging,
she lifts the face from obscurity.
Elizabeth dips her brush into waiting water,
squiggles yellow and green three year old patterns.

I sit at the kitchen table, sip coffee
from a china mug adorned with butterflies.
Today, any insect is a distance,
thirty below, wind-howling snow,
ten a.m. twilight and the three of us
talk art. The furnace clicks on and off.

My coffee, as strong and dark
as the Costa Rican soil it was grown in,
warms the butterflies between my palms.

We believe, the girls and I, these little insects
will come to life at any moment.