Day Twenty

(For more information on my 'April Challenge' see HERE)

(101)MEGAN IN THE AIR

Not one or two but thousands. So many they covered her like clothes, the breath from their wings like small kisses. Megan laughed, her arms wide, and there on the top of the hill I witnessed a miracle: so many butterflies moving as one and she took to the air.

(102)A FLUTTERING HEART

‘They migrate in fluttering flocks,’ Duncan said. ‘Travel hundreds of miles. And when they get there, they hang from branches, trees more butterfly than leaf; they mate then die.’ And the way Duncan told it was sad and beautiful. I put my hand under his shirt where his heart was.

(103)DEAD BUTTERFLIES

Hugh pinned them to boards covered with black velvet, their wings spread wide so their beauty could be seen and measured and recorded. ‘See how wonderful and how delicate and how bright.’ But all she saw were the heads of the pins and the still, and still, and not flying.

(104)CATCH ME IF YOU CAN

I followed one once. For several hours. The skip dancing flight of it taking me far from my own back garden and across fields and rivers. And it seemed to be a game, the flying and me following, and I laughed and sang and turned cartwheels into the blue summer.

(105)NOT A DEAD LEAF

Shirley thought it was a leaf. On the floor of her room. Something carried in on the sole of her shoe. Till she reached down to pick it up and it flitted from her grasp, its wings open, then shut, like the dance of a fairy in a bright frock.