I am still chasing the butterfly dream;
I had it in my hands momentarily
all those years ago
When I was just a child
but it flew away, and never came back.
I thought it would visit again
the same time every year,
but one year turned into two,
two years turned into five,
six, nine, ten.
It never came back.

Yet, almost twenty years later,
I am still here,
waiting for a miracle,
Just so I can finally ask it:
“where did you go?
and where did you take
my childlike happiness?”
I had to replace it with this fake laughter
I perfected years ago.