I Want To Be A Butterfly

I want to be a butterfly.

All the world in its cacophony of chattering webinars and high net worth influencers and ads that prey on words I spoke to myself, when all of it is suddenly extinguished, not through pain or hurt or all the dark things, but in a stolen moment of big sky and purple trees, and owls with their soft hoothoot, and water in great waves crashing, to pure joy I find myself there, whom I thought I had lost.

I did the 9 to 5 slave routine get up and brush teeth and separate my eyelashes each one pristine and unclumped, the dark circles smeared with flesh-colored paste to make me look 20 again or so the ad said online but there is no address to return it. Wake up, drink the coffee and look for messages as I dry my dry hair. It has occurred to me how infrequently I have ever really stopped to look in the mirror. Sure, I dry, I fluff, I paste, I contour, but I never look myself in the eye. For inside that tiny black window is the spark that is known to me, the twirling, flashing, fervent blur of my ideas that swirl and bunch and crowd my confines. I do not want to face that sly spirit waiting to scold me for this monotony I chose because I needed to eat a slice of bread. 

Jump into my clothes so carefully chosen and already out of date when they came to me in bags with big tags and pomp, how I flung them into my closet, the “new” me, this is what will finally do it. Jump again in my car, in my seat, in my office, into my tiny screen that boxes my entire world, pixels and RGB. I chose that, they said it was the thing I needed to build my 401K, my health plan so that my teeth could be replaced and placed and drilled and replaced again, my xrays paid for, my member numbers numbering in the thousands, my passwords inside password protections with passwords of their own. I hear the voice in my head, “you’ve got to get that dollar!” Mom Dad society lovers, you got to get that dollar to pay.

And I have paid dearly. Dreams that blossomed and died from lack of nourishment, love that came and popped like popcorn and grew stale so that I could not taste it anymore except for the salt left on my wounds. You could be a writer! No I cannot afford the rent. You could submit your stories! No, no one is there to read them. And all my dreams in words in sentences swallowed up by an artificial intelligence. “Tell me what you need today?” What is the meaning of life, LOL. I ran and ran and ran to that goal line you said the trophy was waiting for me but the race was rigged and my bib fell off so now I am no one really.

Years and days and minutes of business and one day, one heartbeat, and I am awake. I smelled the flowers today, and the sunset burst my eyes it was fire that hit that tiny hazel window, and my ears rang from the intensity of that quiet. Was I walking? I may have been. Was I in the car?  As I always am, driving back and forth and the list I check off it never ends and the groceries are diminishing, the appointments need rescheduling, and it was so loud I must have drove to the sea and didn’t notice where I was, and suddenly it was so still.

And here I am. Standing cold and shivering in my jacket with my slippers on the sand and the waves are so loud they seem to cancel out all the sound so that it is void. It is that time of night where the light is too dim now for shadows but I am a shadow, or I was. 

Was I holding my breath? Because my lungs are filled with air now and the sound coming out, it feels reminiscent like someone I used to know calling for me, calling after me. And somehow I have split the casting and broken the steel cage that made me so small inside, it took everything I had left and I tore this casing open, I took a breath. 

I see it now, I see the gaudy remains of this prison that kept me. So much paper, and contracts, and signatures and photo security walls, which one has the bike and am I a real person?

But Wings wet with dew, I take another breath and find that I am disappeared, the sky is looming so far above and millions of lights, the stars draw me to themselves. Below me is the chaff of those hard words, a paradigm of control, I did not choose it, I will not bring it with me as I stretch and breathe and smile at the beams of light from the cracks, what is within is without. I shine and I have found the reflection that is now a signpost to my destination. It always was.

I am more than you said I could be, I am more than I accepted from this short-sighted ugliness, the grey and putrid prescription you gave me. I stopped taking it. I begin again. I gasp and fill my lungs at last.

I am. 

A butterfly.