The Process of Catching a Butterfly | Teen Ink

The Process of Catching a Butterfly

May 15, 2011
By xmoonlightx123 PLATINUM, Barnegat, New Jersey
xmoonlightx123 PLATINUM, Barnegat, New Jersey
21 articles 0 photos 3 comments

She spent weeks in the attic
searching for butterflies,
not in the air,
but sleeping in cans of paint.
The days smudged together
into a browning mess
as she chased unlikely hints-
awkward feelers, misshapen speckles.
Every picture was fraudulent,
every stroke, a mistake,
so she cried to the floorboards.
Dirty, tear-streaked, tired,
she was eluded by winged grace
even then in her dreams.
But in the moonlight, a restless foot,
thrown out in somnambulant rage,
caught her colored cans by surprise.
In the morning,
she found new hues of revelation in the sunrise:
spilled across a strewn canvas
was her perfect butterfly.



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