l i f e
butterflies
contributions
christopher@30seconds.org
The blood congeals as I take a look around. The lake is a kidney shaped acre with three foot muddy banks. Saw grass and cat-tails line the banks and dragonflies dart about, lighting momentarily on bent weeds. The smell of earth and clay reminds me of raw sewage. Stagnant. Dead in itself, but so alive with the things it contains.
The mud is soft and resembles wet clay on a pottery wheel, waiting to be shaped. Waiting for my feet. Waiting for my fingers to squeeze it through the cracks in my hands. To slim it up and out, 'round and 'round, until the shape it too heavy, too unlikely, too fantastic to support itself any longer and it comes crashing down into the same shapeless mass it was moments before, and only I...and I alone...shared in its creation and destruction.
The blood is dry and attracts flies and gnats. They get tangled in the hair on my limbs as I slap at them and reopen the wounds to flow fresh for a few moments until the sun cooks the blood dry and the flies and gnats come back to repeat the cycle. My body bleeds then doesn't, then bleeds again, each time losing a little more of its life to the insects. My life. It becomes habit and I think on it no more.
I've come through the woods by chance. Falling over the fence of barbed wire and losing my clothes and my pursuers. I heard them for awhile after me still, in vain, and they will never find me here. They cannot leave behind what they must in order to track me. I'm safe. I don't belong to them. I belong here.
A fish breaks the surface of the water and its scales catch the sun like a piece of change flipped into the air. It hits the water with a resounding splash, some ripples, and is gone. It doesn't take long for the ripples to spread, lapping at the side of the pond. Gurgling into the crevices where the snakes may live and the bullfrogs croak.
I notice the crickets for the first time. Even though it's afternoon I hear their long drawn out noise of twilight. I picture their black exoskeletons and barbed legs moving in droves by the thousands, just out of sight, just under the crabgrass and clover, just under my feet, acres and acres of crickets. Acres of luck. Calling. Calling to each other.
I notice the buttercups for the first time as well. Random patches of yellow, like splotches of color in the madness of Van Gogh, but somehow possessing the detail of a Flemish still life. I pick them and rub their scent in my hands until I feel heat from the friction and the buttercup is nothing but a smashed mass of pulp and pollen. Then I run my hands through my hair, pushing it back with the oil of flowers. I am almost ready.
I step through the weeds and feel the hair on my neck rise as first my right foot, and then my left, enters the water. I'm ankle deep and slowly moving out. Algae clings around my shins and trails behind. My cuts burn at first, but the water soon soothes them into a dull, infected, cool throb. I'm truly alive as the water climbs to the soft space behind my knees where no hair will grow. It climbs no farther.
I squat into the water slowly as a flock of Monarch butterflies circles 'round the pond like so much glitter thrown through the light. Thousands of them, all exactly the same, fill the air with dust from their wings. So many wings I can hear them. Hear them displace the air. Thick. So thick they almost block out the sky and I have no doubt there are more here now then in all the world.
I move slow. Minutes to kneel into the water. I kneel just enough to build pressure around me, but leave most of my torso exposed. Then I'm still. Nothing moves but the butterflies, and they begin to land. At first on the cat-tails and saw grass and then on the thin reeds, and finally on the water and myself. On my arms, and head. I can feel them clinging to my back. My eyelids are covered with the dust from their wings and that is when I leap...
I jump with all the force my body will give me.
I throw up and out my arms and wave them around like an oak in a storm. I scatter butterflies as far as I may.
Circling the pond once more, they gain altitude but never leave. Then, with the curiosity of children they come back and I kneel down, ready to repeat the cycle once more...
goodnight 4.28.98
