Butterflies

In one quick, sweeping motion, she opened up the window and let the butterflies fly free. They flew past her like fluttering golden locks, uniting into one somewhere in the distance. She had released them too late, she felt; many of them had already died and where sitting all around her room like still, dried witnesses of her winter romance. They had had eyes once, and walking into her room had been like entering a swarm of interchanging gazes. No one was subject here, all was object for the looks of the butterfly-wings. It had been scary at times, being the object of myriads of eyes that constantly opened and closed. Fluttering eyes. But now the butterflies were still and had closed their eyes. There was no more visuality, and she had gone back to reclaiming the safety of her subject. She picked from her blue kimono hanging next to the water basin, a butterfly that had gone to rest in the silky sea. For a second, she could feel its velvet texture between her fingers. Then, as if it had never been, it turned to dust and drizzled to the floor. She rubbed her fingers against each other, trying to recall the fleeting texture, and then returned her minds vision to the fluttering eyes. Dissolved into the object being, being seen from every possible angle at once and unable to contain even the slightest corner of subjectivity, she tried to find him amongst the butterflies. She tried to find his eyes amongst the millions. It had been a game, a wonderfully innocent, yet desirous game. She crawled, she jumped, she searched and danced, always could she feel his eyes on her, but never could she find them. Until one day, when the butterflies died. The thought had come to her that morning; perhaps his eyes were not to be found in the fluttering cloud after all, perhaps they were outside. The first butterfly settled and closed its wings at the thought. She tried to push aside the thought, but one by one the yellow eyes still settled, and one by one they closed. Suddenly, through the paling sea of yellow, she could see him now. She could see his fear and hesitation. She could see that he had not been playing her game of hide and seek, but had been waiting. Waiting for the hour that can never arrive – waiting for courage. Like a sudden fall, hundreds of butterflies dropped to the floor, closed their eyes and turned to dust. She sat among them, in the yellow rain. Some remained fluttering, but they could not longer keep her in her object form. They could not see her every angle all at once. Her subjectivity returned in patches and spots. She wept. But still he waited. Butterflies landed, and still he waited. She looked at him, turned and rose in the field of yellow death. Then she opened up her window and released what was left.