The Runaway Bungalow

The penis with the butterfly tattoo

arrived in the mail that afternoon. A plain cardboard box, book rate. Inside a bubble-wrap cocoon was the plastic bottle, Sue Bee Honey. The norteamericano supermarkets displayed these in tidy rows near the peanut butter. The butterfly’s wings hung limp in a golden haze of honey as though it had only just left its chrysalis and paused in the sun to dry.

The eyebrows of Oswaldo Patricio Meléndez O’Rourke y Nuñez described a reddish-brown arch above his golden Inca eyes. “So, Pat’s dick.” Oswaldo held the plastic squeeze bottle to the light. “They killed him.” Oswaldo spoke to the cheery little bee on the label. “Para no olvidar, a forget-me-not.” Sue Bee smiled back. That it was Patricio’s manly part, Oswaldo was sure. He unscrewed the plastic cap of the honey bottle and dumped its contents down the garbage disposal. The grinding went on no longer than for an apple core or a melon rind. That the flaccid organ of which his uncle was so proud arrived by mail and not FedEx ruled out self-mutilation. In life Patricio traveled first class.

Several thousand miles to the south, the butterflies hung, frozen stiff. Orange and black bodies of Danaus Plexippus, the common monarch, clung to the trees, then fell. “Something in the milkweed,” the norteamericanos said about the dying butterflies. With a wet winter, an unseasonable sleet and no blossoms of helianthus, aster and verbena to browse to keep up their strength on the long flight north, the butterflies died in their millions.

But here one butterfly had returned to North America.