It was the graphium sarpedon, a blue triangle, she had tattooed. A rare species of butterfly, hard to catch.
The day of her death, Emily told me she was chasing the love of her life. Two tattoos for two hearts. She stood in the kitchen, wearing a sweatshirt and jeans, grinning. Smitten was an understatement, but I didn’t dare question her – to interrogate her was to catch her, and I wanted my sister to enjoy what it was she had found.
Maybe if her tattooed butterflies had real wings, she could have saved herself from the hanging – the rope that burned deep into her flesh and cut her life short.
In one of his drunken stupors days ago, my father mumbled something about bruises and scratches around her neck. He said in the suicides he’s investigated, it can happen when a victim panics in tying the rope, or in the drop, if they decide against what they’ve done.