Madame Butterfly

In my world of dreams, I saw her.
The woman with the butterfly’s wings. The lady that carried death on the wind.
When I awoke the next morning, I thought of nothing but her. I remember it all clearly. How she grew younger with each passing minute. How the world seemed to change around her but she never did, not even for a second’s blessing.
I never quite got her out of my mind. But she wasn’t just a figment of my imagination.
She really does exist, you know.
You have to remember that it was she who did not come to me. For it would have made all the differences in the world.
I wouldn’t be here to tell you so.

There is a meadow somewhere in the field of dreams, where the air is fresh with the scent of after-rain, where you can see the high hills that stretch beyond the horizon, and the sky is filled with butterflies; thousands of them in a myriad menagerie of colours.
The souls of all mankind.

She makes her home amongst the fragile things; she plays with them and sings to them when they are feeling lonely.
And when she descends upon the mortal world, she unfolds her wings. They are like paper fans; delicate and etched with pretty colours, while the tips are rimmed with shades of black.
Black was never related to death. It is the colour of change.

Death, on the other hand, is a rainbow of colours. She has seen life flash before her eyes in streams of red, which is why she cries pools of blue misery. Yet there is the promise of hope that shines warm and yellow, for life is green when it begins anew, like fresh spring grass. And then there are all the rest of the colours blended onto this easel – the little things that make our lives meaningful, because the world will be but a blank canvas without them.

Death isn’t all about a bed of skulls or an angel of stone towering over another piece of stone.
That’s the reaper’s job.
No one’s seen him, of course. But if she exists, then perhaps, so does he.

You think you know what death is because you’ve stayed up all night with weary eyes, standing guard over the lifeless but ominous casket.
You’ve been led to believe that by putting up a masquerade of sympathy and tears, you would be accepted into a society that has embraced death the way the blind hold one another.
But she’ll let you in on a secret – something you don’t know about yourself.

The truth is, in the eyes of death, we are as worse, if not the same, as the common moth who plays the fool; a parody of the original thing itself. For the moth is by far a greater scavenger than the vulture, and while it does not share the same diet of flesh as the bird of carrion, this agent of death becomes a plague of deceit.
It deceives us all.

We appear to be as dull and as lifeless as the faded and washed-out colours of the moth’s wings in the face of death. But given the opportunity, we are creatures drawn so easily to other people’s sorrows. We feed on them because it makes us feel better than our fellow neighbour who is wretched with misfortune.

We are moths in nature; drawn to the flames of anguish and grief.

It pains her to watch as the humans grow into trees of their former selves; all gnarly and wrinkled, and slowly perishing on the inside. She has decided that she too wants to die, but the extent of her mortality stretches as far as the end of the universe.
A line on her face might disappear every now and then; her skin grows smoother than a cat’s warm pelt, but that’s all there is to her youth. After all, beautiful butterflies can’t exactly crawl back into their cocoons and start all over as grubby little caterpillars.

But when a soul departs from its body, it emerges from a shell of its former self. It is free of pain, sickness and death; free as the wings it has now grown on its back.
And when it flies, it comes into her gentle grasp.
She cradles it in her palms as she would a newborn babe, and sings of sweet songs and promises as its little wings kiss the hands of the maiden who hides her woes.
There will be plenty of butterflies to play with in my garden of dreams, she whispers. Come with me, and we will fly away to a place where happiness is free and innocence is bliss.
And I think you know the rest.

When you are old and all alone, take some time to shut yourself away from the chaos that is the world around you. Listen to what the songs of silence have to say.
If the only sound you hear is the slow beating of your heart, listen, listen carefully, and perhaps you will hear the gentle patter of wings flapping in the distant breeze – that is the sound of life that is close to its cyclic end.
And it doesn’t matter if it happens in April’s showers or December’s frost, but eventually, she will come. She wants to know you like her best friend.

When you are gone and your children’s children are gone, though I may not think about you, but she will always.

She never forgets.