Sinking Ships and Silent Lips

My hand was a restless butterfly in your palm, pink beating wings against your fingertips in vain attempts to stay trapped.
"Dead things don't need cages" I thought (wise beyond the moment), unsure at the time of anything but warm blood rushing through the arm pressed into mine, until my spinning thoughts concluded that our circulatory systems were entangled like the roots of trees in a book quotation I'd memorised off an invitation to a wedding that I never attended. You soothed the silence of night sky into my pulse and fed my veins fire. Stole the air from my lungs only to breathe it back in through my lips, feeding the flames.