Butterflies
“There’s nothing special about butterflies,” he insists. “They’re born, they eat, they sleep, they fly, they mate, and then they die. End of story.”
“But they’re beautiful,” I object. It is one of our more interesting conversations, the sort of thing nobody usually thinks about. As usual, I’m not exactly sure how we get onto the topic of butterflies – something about movie titles, I think – but (as usual) it doesn’t matter. He’s the one doing most of the talking.
“They’re bugs,” he says. His hands move gently in front of him as he talks, as though illustrating the point. All I see is white wings, slender and eloquent. “Their life span is only a fraction of our own and the spend it doing nothing of great importance. They’re impermanent. Nobody remembers them.”
“Temporary beauty is still beauty,” I say mildly. I am only half listening. The simple act of existing feels like an effort in the hot stillness of the sun – I am indolent, unwilling to think, watching the sky. A monarch flutters by on a waft of warm spring air, its wings like candle flames. It lands on a flower and flexes.
“See?” he says. “Stupid.”
I watch the tiny creature for a moment.
“Clever,” I say.
“I beg your pardon?”
“Look at it. The way the wings are so thin, the body so small and fragile. Who could conceive of something so tiny being alive?”
He regards it without compassion.
“A bug,” he repeats.
“Look,” I say again. I point to a swan plant nearby, the leaves busy with soft, delicate monarch caterpillars liveried in black, white and yellow. I pick one up and hand it to him.
“What’s this?”
“Caterpillars,” I say. “Look closely at the imperfect form, the groundling. It cannot fly, but it will. One day.”
He strokes the caterpillar’s back with one finger, and laughs at the prickle of its legs against his palm. The caterpillar crawls to the edge of his hand and he nudges it back, absorbed.
“You see?”
“See what?”
“The perfect metaphor. A caterpillar works hard all its life, eating almost ceaselessly, leaf upon leaf, shedding skin after skin. Then it pupates and rests before undergoing the final change.”
“When it becomes a butterfly.”
“Yes. Do you understand?”
He thinks about this for a long time. Spring and silence fill the air with a faint hum, the sound of unbroken stillness, freshly mown grass and the intimacy of friends. The caterpillar crawls up his bare wrist and arm, until he plucks it from his skin and gently returns it to the leaf.
“I think I see,” he says slowly, when it is gone. “But what happens to the butterfly?”
I breathe in the smell of honeysuckle and lavender.
“That’s what’s special about butterflies,” I say softly. “They’re born, they eat, they sleep, they fly, they mate and then they die.”
...no, seriously. Dont hurt me! 
Very tender and sensual too... cool stuff.
