From a distance, it was splendor and enchantment – a semi-circle of cream tinged with spots of Robin’s egg blue and hints of rust. Fluttering from the Korean lilac to the ostrich fern and back again, it charmed on this sunny summer day, demanding a closer inspection, demanding a second look. Butterflies often play this game.
When I approached, it didn’t flit away like they often will. Instead, it paused for me to see its tattered and torn wings, the way pieces of it were missing, the way it was incomplete. Undulating its wings gently, it seemed to rest there with a certain weariness, not able to garnish the energy to fly swiftly away.
The world isn’t always kind to pretty things.
How it came to be in such a state, we will never know. Maybe it was some terrible storm that knocked it about, flinging it into brush and debris and ripping apart some of its decoration. Maybe a hungry bird pecked away at it before giving up, the pattern working its magic of confusing the predator, allowing the butterfly to escape without damage to its vital organs. Maybe it wound itself into a thorny predicament where the only way out was to rip some of itself off to get out. I can empathize with all of those scenarios.
The world isn’t always kind to many things.
