A Butterfly

It's like a butterfly, she thinks, as she cradles its broken remnants against her heart.

It could be because it’s fragile. Maybe it’s because it, too, is a beautiful thing to watch flutter around free in the sky. There isn’t a care in the world that bothers it.

She’s not sure, not really, but maybe —just maybe, she thinks— it’s because it is all too easily killed. It is all too easily crushed in the uncaring hands of another.

(Why did this happen?)

She’s not quite sure what makes her draw the comparison between the two. There’s no reason for that to be the first thought that jumps her thoughts in a desperate bid to grasp onto her attention in an attempt to not let her forget it. But that’s exactly the thought that's there.

She gazes down at her empty hands; there's nothing she can do now, she supposes. She’s taken care of the important things, and she’s waited too long as it is.

So she goes.

She goes to the gardens. The public ones that on the other side of town, yes, which turns it into quite a long walk, but she goes, and all the while the sharp shards in her chest cause drops of liquid glass to well up in her eyes. They threaten to fall down her cheeks. She keeps her head up high and ignores the vibrant sting as the edges bite into her skin.

(It shouldn’t have been like this—)

Her feet lead her to the phlox and marigolds, and the brilliant colors are almost too bright for her tired eyes. She follows along old, stone paths next to where the heliotrope sits beneath the warmth of the dying sun. She passes by the roses and the aster and the hollyhocks; the lady bells all in a row.

It’s only when she reaches the sunflowers that she stops. It’s only when she stares in silence at the golden-yellow tones of the petals that she sinks to her knees and weeps.

No, that’s not right.

She doesn’t weep—she wails.

She wails and she sobs and her entire body shakes under the weight of her agony, because there is no way she can hold herself still while her heart is being crushed and torn like the wings of her imaginary butterfly. The fragments of her soul are laid out in front of her on the damp soil, and there is no way for her to sweep them back up. No way to piece them back together. Her lamentations are loud and painful and nearly deafening. Somehow, there is no-one else to hear her strangled cries and distraught words.

(Why did it have to end like this?)

(I trusted you—)

(I believed in you—)

(So why did you do this to me?)

(You said it would be alright—)

(Why did you tell me all of those lies?)

(I thought—)

(—I thought—)

(—I thought this wouldn’t happen.)

(I thought you wouldn’t let it happen.)

When she is finished, she is left sitting on cold cobblestone with nothing but the sound of the breeze rustling the flowers and her own occasional sniffle. What courage she had been holding onto earlier —what strength she’d been clinging to— is all gone.

So she sits, and she stares at the sunflowers, and wonders how she let it all happen.

She wonders how she had trusted them so much.

She wonders how she had let herself believe for even a single second that things would be fine. That luck would be on their side. That this exact event would never come to pass.

She wonders why she had placed so much faith on those men and women who had sworn to do their best to help, despite there being nothing they could do.

Eventually, she stands up and finds her balance. She rubs away the smears of mascara that are now staining her cheeks, she straightens her ponytail.

It takes her longer than it should have to return home, but when she does make it she doesn’t go inside. Not yet. Instead, she just stares at the dark wood of the door, which she decides is much too heavy to try and open.

Why? Because it will be too dark inside, she knows. Too empty.

There won’t be any more noise—any more light. What happiness she had is gone. There is only darkness and regret and more painful reminders waiting for her inside the place that used to hold so much joy, and now—

Oh.

It’s as she’s staring at her door that she remembers why she thought of faith as a butterfly.

It was a myth —she’s sure it was a greek one— where a girl opened a box full of all spirits. They were awful, cruel spirits that would soon plague the world with every pain known to man. The girl had managed to close it only after all of them had escaped.

All except one, that is.

When she peeked inside, the girl had seen that it was hope, who had taken the form of a butterfly. And so humanity held onto hope, and her own mind had associated butterflies with all forms of belief and faith and everything else that was so very, very fragile and beautiful.

Still, it’s only as her hand is wrapping itself around the metal doorknob that she finally realizes why hope was in that box in the first place.

(They...they really are the cruelest things of all, aren’t they?)

(Hope.)

(Faith.)

(The thought that maybe things will be better, if only we wait until tomorrow.)

(They only make things worse.)

She goes inside.

She hangs her coat, takes off her shoes.

And she wanders the small expanse of her apartment, lost.

...

It’s much too small now.

...

(I had faith in you—)

(But you lied when you told me—)

(That she wouldn’t die.)

...

...

...

She can’t bring herself to enter the empty nursery.