In the midst of a sweet summer night, my love to be made a wish to a falling star for sweet, eternal love. Before the summer was over, the ‘butterfly effect’ took over and our cocoon was born. The protective, silky case that we would nurture for the months to come with the utmost care. It would grow to reveal this stunning butterfly that we would proudly name ‘Relationship’. It would open its wings and take us on an ever-lasting trip among the stars. Our kisses would taste of syrup, our skin would taste of ripe peaches and we would make love hovering beneath the moon, engulfed in a subtle aroma of freshly-cut grass. Pretty classic, you might think, only our fairytale would have no ending.
A fighter and winner by nature, my love to be set his mind and soul on raising the most beautiful creature of all. Our cocoon, he would tell me, ‘will reveal a butterfly with wings in a shade of deep blue, with orange splashes here and there’. ‘It will grow to be the king of the butterfly kingdom, the envy of all living, flying creatures’. I believed him because he was rarely wrong.
For nights and nights we slept on our opposite sides of the bed, with our fragile cocoon tucked tightly between us. But, sadly, perhaps opposing its nature, our cocoon grew worryingly slowly.
After kissing for hours, we would sit up in bed secretly counting its inches, scared to make words out of our fears. But they moistened the air, so much that after a while you could see droplets forming on the ceiling and crystallizing in the corners of the room. At times, our worries made the air so damp that, in the heat of the night, we could hardly breathe. The droplets would rhythmically fall on our foreheads, giving us a melodic but uneasy sleep.
My love to be grew uneasy by the second. I woke up one morning with silky fibers tangled in my hair and caught in my eyelashes. ‘When you turned your back on me last night’, he said, ‘I untangled some strings from our cocoon’. He was rushing the birth of our butterfly and I, the protective mother and stubborn child, would spin the fibers back into place every Sunday afternoon. ‘It’s just taking it’s time’ I used to tell him.
Shortly after New Year’s eve, our creature was finally born. It quietly opened its wings one morning but, like an underdeveloped child, it was crinkly and clumsy. Too fragile to be the king of butterflies we had dreamt of. Like my love to be had predicted, its wings were blue. But it was a pale and nostalgic shade, like the color of the Caribbean sea on a cloudy morning. Like predicted, there were surprisingly bright splashes of orange here and there but they looked unflattering, almost wrong, on the pale blue background.
Our butterfly, Relationship, lived another sixty days and sixty nights and, as peacefully as it had arrived, with no fireworks or celebrations, it fell on the floor with a dull thud, and died. I cried and cried for nights and nights. For not saving it.
I heard that the ancient word for butterfly is psyche, but we didn't give wings to eachothers' soul. I also heard that butterflies live from a week to nearly a year. With our half year of kissing, maybe we didn’t do that bad after all.
A fighter and winner by nature, my love to be set his mind and soul on raising the most beautiful creature of all. Our cocoon, he would tell me, ‘will reveal a butterfly with wings in a shade of deep blue, with orange splashes here and there’. ‘It will grow to be the king of the butterfly kingdom, the envy of all living, flying creatures’. I believed him because he was rarely wrong.
For nights and nights we slept on our opposite sides of the bed, with our fragile cocoon tucked tightly between us. But, sadly, perhaps opposing its nature, our cocoon grew worryingly slowly.
After kissing for hours, we would sit up in bed secretly counting its inches, scared to make words out of our fears. But they moistened the air, so much that after a while you could see droplets forming on the ceiling and crystallizing in the corners of the room. At times, our worries made the air so damp that, in the heat of the night, we could hardly breathe. The droplets would rhythmically fall on our foreheads, giving us a melodic but uneasy sleep.
My love to be grew uneasy by the second. I woke up one morning with silky fibers tangled in my hair and caught in my eyelashes. ‘When you turned your back on me last night’, he said, ‘I untangled some strings from our cocoon’. He was rushing the birth of our butterfly and I, the protective mother and stubborn child, would spin the fibers back into place every Sunday afternoon. ‘It’s just taking it’s time’ I used to tell him.
Shortly after New Year’s eve, our creature was finally born. It quietly opened its wings one morning but, like an underdeveloped child, it was crinkly and clumsy. Too fragile to be the king of butterflies we had dreamt of. Like my love to be had predicted, its wings were blue. But it was a pale and nostalgic shade, like the color of the Caribbean sea on a cloudy morning. Like predicted, there were surprisingly bright splashes of orange here and there but they looked unflattering, almost wrong, on the pale blue background.
Our butterfly, Relationship, lived another sixty days and sixty nights and, as peacefully as it had arrived, with no fireworks or celebrations, it fell on the floor with a dull thud, and died. I cried and cried for nights and nights. For not saving it.
I heard that the ancient word for butterfly is psyche, but we didn't give wings to eachothers' soul. I also heard that butterflies live from a week to nearly a year. With our half year of kissing, maybe we didn’t do that bad after all.
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ReplyDeleteI think we did quite well. Bumpy ride but lovely curves!!!!!!!!!!!!
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