Stowaways traveling the open seas on a trader’s ship.
She’s like a monarch butterfly;
queenly and free.
I don’t know where she comes from,
and I don’t know where she’s going.
Where I’m going.
If she asked why I’m going with her,
and if I answered,
she would leave me, fluttering her freckled wings to the rhythm of my beating heart.
Then I would crawl out from the hiding place we shared.
I would walk out onto the spruce deck for everyone to see
my goodbye to her.
I would wave my fur hat in the air to call out,
”Farewell!”
stretching my arm up to the sky as high as it goes.
Then she would fade into the mist of the Southern villages.
Her posters would be plastered on the clay walls, juvenile as ever.
The coal pencil she used to scrawl his “portrait” on the parchment
left stains on her hands and stains on my clothes.
While we were hiding,
I asked where she came from.
How could she draw so elementary while thinking so wisely?
She spoke the answer in a proverb I couldn’t understand, her voice lilting up and down.
It was like I could hear her wings begin to flap.
What I do understand is a simple saying:
An eye for an eye.
A question for a question,
so an answer for an answer.
I have a plan now for when I must reciprocate;
Make a big scene for everyone to see
my goodbye
to my fleeting, beautiful butterfly.
Feb 14
Feb 14, 2026 at 12:28 AM UTC