The Monarch Butterfly

A story about misguided love.

The monarch butterfly sat on her latticed window sill, like a Monet hanging in the Louvre.  It was hungry, machiavellian, seeking to ensnare her.  Dusty thoughts pervaded her somnolent mind.  She breathed in the lilacs from the Italian garden below.  Tangerine belladonna thoughts she kept in an old beech box underneath her bed clung to her extremities like scared children in a storm.  That one fatal kiss that swept her into the netherworld, where Isolde and Tristan slumbered.  Yes, that winged devil endeavors entrapment.   He had held her like she was the Holy Grail and he was Sir Gawain.  They drank heaven's elixir from each other's lips.  Nature's majestic wonders entranced them for black and white silent film moments.  The butterfly flexed his wings, pulsating like their doomed hearts trapped in an onyx barred cage.  She got off the life support and breathed air on her own, severing the symbiosis and gazing at him with incredulous astonishment.  Who was this incubus who stole diamond necklaces while she dreamt of burlesque and anime?  Surely he was a well-dressed imp, a spy sent to steal state secrets.  But beautiful he was, like a perfect Greek statue worshipped in an Acropolis temple.  From head to toe, each feature excruciatingly flawless.  He once told her that "Death was beautiful," and now she has knelt in his pew.   The wings of the butterfly, orange mottled caresses and black pitiless kisses, stood razor sharp before her, waiting to slice her unearthed heart once more.  She bid him farewell, for their lives were mismatched.  He responded with brimstone and fire.  And she did what she had to do to save her from ultimate despair and wretchedness.  She turned away.  And the butterfly was no more.

 

(dedicated to J.)