Butterflies

Her last card had hand-drawn butterflies.

She hasn't written in a while. Quite a while. But I understood as I wanted her too to understand why I haven't written. So we forged our lives in the shadow of each other's silence.

A shadow that will seldom express itself. And in those times, only through my accursed writing hand.

There were lines in their trail, suggesting flight.

These your delicate creatures, your black and white emissaries, how should I regard them? I have been neglectful. And in both love and friendship, neglect is neglect. The tumultous months will present no excuse. Whatever I have been through will serve no valid explanation. Death, strife, love, and so many hates may come in the intervening time, but that will mean nothing.

Thus I am neglectful. And it would be easy to say that I am in flight. Yet, I still believe, she knows better. How I fear that she does.

And you let the butterflies follow me, wherever I may choose to go.

I once told you stories in those spaces between your songs. Were we as before, I would tell you about Gabriel Garcia-Marquez and how he treated butterflies.

He had a pursuant lover pursued by a host of yellow butterflies. They were a saying of his people, that lovers seem like they had butterflies about them.

He had true butterflies on his tail. And he would notice save for the all-consuming focus of his love. And when he endeavored to sneak into the chamber of his co-conspirator-beloved, the bright yellow trail betrayed him.

And he would die. And so would the butterflies, crushed between the blades of the electric fan, wings clipped by disarray, small luminous bodies squished by the toll of time and the forbidding laws.

And see, your last card had hand-drawn butterflies.

While here I write, damned to overread even your silence.