Butterfly Golden
She seeks green as she crawls along the dirt, stopping to take small bites of the leaves until a heart is carved in the empty space. She has only one job: to sustain her energy. And so she moves. Each day. Craving green. Finding fuel. Etching her autograph in her path in a motion that mirrors the ocean, while stretching her 4,000 muscles toward movement of her soul. In the conduit of her being she knows she is more. She can feel it. Like an ancient message buried deep within her fibers.
So she disappears. And pulls the green to her core. The outside world is blocked from her layers. She uses all her energy. Closes her eyes. And waits.
She feels inside she is the only one who has been here. Experience this intense transformation. Reborn by melting and rebuilding. Protected in a cocoon of isolation, held by a thread of hope. Sharing cells and memories from her original form, testifying that change can be the whole, marked with scents of the past.
The sun comes out. The wind that should have destroyed her fragile wings, instead, gently blows them dry. And she is grateful. She is love.
She misses the earth next to her belly but not as much as she craves the air between her paper thin wings. She is not ready to fly, yet. Stillness finds her mind. A quick of inner light flashes.
She expects her wings to be a clean, new white. Instead, they are made of the element found from mining deep within the layers of hard rock. Shiny star matter. Bonding. Real.
She counts not the days she will live, but the moments that brand her alive.
Butterfly golden. She will soar.
And the green heart will be her biggest sail.
Thanks for reading Writers Guild — A Smedian publication
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