Carefree

I remember one lunchtime during high school, I walked out to the parking lot with one of my best friends, Joy. It must have been junior or senior year, when it was THE thing to drive out for lunch. This one particular day was a normal day...nothing eventful, nothing special. But something caught my eye and made me stop and forget everything. It was a big and beautiful butterfly I caught in a kind of dance with the breeze, just a few inches from me. It was wrapping around this invisible sphere again and again. It didn't seem to matter that it was in the middle of a parking lot or that a person was looking at it...it just played carelessly for however many seconds and then it was gone. Maybe it got lost along the way to wherever it was trying to go, but found something worthwhile. it made the rest of my day feel a little lighter.

Today, I saw a butterfly on the window sill of the Krispy Kreme a couple blocks from my apartment. It was there for a couple seconds...and then it fluttered off into the thick air, through the traffic, onto the other side of the street. I tried to follow it...but it disappeared between a taxi and a minibus. What was it doing here? I don't know but I could have followed it forever.