Butterflies

     This blog is named with two butterflies in mind.

     I met the first butterfly when I was five. She, or he -- butterflies do not generally advertise their gender -- floated over the creased green blades of grass in front of my home. Milk-white wings with vanilla bean flecks carried it over sharp edges that were illuminated by a strong mid-morning sun.
     I was lonely or bored. The small white soul glided in pretty patterns. My feet quietly stepped closer to the butterfly; my thin hand reached out to seize this creature for myself, to possess its beauty and freedom to fly.
    When I withdrew my hand back the butterfly was under my shadow, in the grass, with a grass blade piercing through both pale wings.
     I tried to pull the butterfly out and make it fly, but its wings shredded and stuck. All I ended up with was a hand coated in fine white dust. All the butterfly kept was a slowly fading life, but one that was pinned to the ground.
     I knew I had killed it. I was -- and I am -- very sorry: for harming it, for trying to claim it as my own or use it for my own enjoyment.
     The second butterfly came to me in college. I was walking at night in the central park as two of my friends chatted along the path in front of me.
     I remember a fluttering creature in the still darkness and orange campus lamps. Because of the late hour, I thought I was only imagining a monarch, or its cousin species. My friends stared as I ran ahead of them on the path.
     Yes, it was a butterfly, in large orange and black wings like garden petals. I cupped my hands and scooped the air sideways and then I looked down.
     I had caught a butterfly. It weighed nothing, but I felt a moving creature grabbing purchase on my palms with six perfect spindly legs. It was a life -- lighter than a piece of paper, but also more substantial.
      Warm air from my nostrils blew onto the butterfly. It is cold-blooded, I reasoned, perhaps it needs warmth in this night. Slowly, the butterfly folded its wings up and down, up and down, as if to rest.
      Where did it come from? Where was it going at that late hour?  I never knew; I gave a final warm breath and raised my cupped hands, and the butterfly went free.
      Perhaps, like butterflies, my stories and poems and thoughts have their own breaths and natures.