Birch trees swayed over in the rhythmic breath, the forest alive that night with light.

That night….

With butterflies….

With lights grouping, clustering in two, twirling in dance, whispering to grass strands in the bits of darkness that they clung to so close. It was the two of them, in the middle, just watching, lying, touching, side by side, as these little dim lovers played silently on little flutes of signal.

It was her who, with a plain voice, a normal reach, pointed to the sky above that laid out as a dark canvas above where the little lights danced. “Look at them…” Her hand, barely wrapped around his chest, calmly moved, tracing the outlines of his shirt. “Do you see them?”

With no motion, his body was like that of lead. Only able to lean his head of brown straw back slightly, he glanced at what modest bits of wooden hazel he could comprehend under the locks that were her eyes. His head rested on her lap, her arms his only blanket. He looked down, away from her.

“No…I don’t see them….”

His whisper didn’t seem to faze her, but it did bring her voice into a more delicate balance.

“You don’t?”

Unknowingly, with air cooler than his breath, she took his hand from the grass, not letting him go with the other, and placing his palm against the firmament blue. Her hands were so much thinner, like fluid, glowing with a white that even his could never compare to. His chalked, gray, musty hands….

His dirty hands….

“Do you see them now…?”

His eyes glanced back and forth, his arm growing stiff in the air. “No…”

Her lips pursed, unknowing. “You don’t see them….”

Already a statue, his arm stayed standing, her feathered fingers twisted down the column.

“Why?”

She stopped at his shoulder.

“Why…?”

The way she said it. That word…that one word. It was enough to make him clench every nerve in his body, to let go and die from the smell that perforated from her. The way he felt now was enough to twist his body, to writhe in agony that no one could understand. If only she knew….If only she could…just….

“I don’t know….” He kept himself from cringing. “I just don’t know what you’re talking about….”

With lunar moons that glinted like two hourglasses, her eyes swam with the light. “The butterflies…they’re all around us…” She traced up his arm again, clenching around his hand. “They’re beautiful….”

Everything she said….

“You’re wrong….”

The hand against his shoulder froze.

“There is nothing there….” he said. “I don’t see the butterflies…I don’t see anything, because…there’s just something, I never wanted to see…” He placed his arm back down to his side.


“…In my way….”

It was then that she leaned in close to the nape of his neck. “What…?”


“You….”

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