a butterfly

She was comely and collected, but much too demure for my typical tastes. However, seeing her in the bucolic known to locals as only “the island,” her personality had an indescribable urge to bloom into complex gossamer. It was only here where she became, rather suddenly, effervescent and ebullient. The girl had a secret affection for pastiche and would lilt in fresh fallen rain because, according to her, “it was quintessential to one’s life to inhale the petrichor regularly.” I would find her often near the riparian of the natural spring in the middle of “the island,” crouched low over the stream; she would cup her hands and drink the dulcet water without hesitation for she claimed that the water “was an elixir of eloquence.” She then, on the best of days, would look up at me with water still dripping off her chin and smile. Living my summers on the island, I found myself in a very serendipitous situation. All this time spent looking for what would become of the rest of my life, I had found the thing that would deviate me so greatly from the life I had imagined. That thing was love. I realized it one night, lying in a Brazilian-made hammock underneath the stars; the thought, like a ripple, continued to grow and accelerate, becoming a large wave, its whitened bubbly foam contrasting the light blue sky into which it protruded. However, as quickly as it came, it simmered into a dying spark. Ceileann searc ainimh ’s locht. The girl I had drawn so close to my heart was soon on the bed of her death. As I looked for the last time into her blue eyes, like staring into the depths of every ocean in the universe, a single tear escaped my eye and ran down the length of my cheek. Its saltiness and viscosity held on to a single pore on the tip of my nose for a second and I felt its small hands grabbing and attempting with every last breath to climb back up the bridge and into my eye. However, she smiled at me and the single tear let go, falling slowly towards her face. So damn slowly. It crashed onto her jaw with rage and slid down her neck quickly amalgamating with the sweat now dripping out her own pores. She said to me with whispered breath, “A chuisle mo chroí,” and the blue in her eyes turned to gray and they closed. For some reason, or for one that I cannot simply recall, I sat there on her bed and, while I moved the hair from her face, I thought of a single butterfly landing on the tip of her nose or perhaps the valley of her lips. Those soft lips. For a short time I wished one would fly through the window and land there. For an even shorter time, I begged one to come, just so I could see the way its bright, incandescent wings matched the paleness of her skin. I begged and begged, but no butterfly ever came. I knew then that I was crazy for wishing so hard for a butterfly to land its tiny legs on my dead friend-but not ever did I wish so hard for something in my entire life.