The Black Butterfly

Place to place, plant to plant,

the black butterfly wanders,

restless beneath the sun.

Every garden promises something:

a sweeter flower,

a softer place to land,

a color not yet seen.

This is the hunger.

We wander and wonder,

captivated by the beauty

of every garden we enter,

believing somewhere

there must be a resting place.

Perhaps it will be a person.

Perhaps a home.

A city where we finally belong.

A life so complete

we stop counting the days.

We tell ourselves:

when I arrive, when I have enough,

when someone loves me enough,

then I will rest.

But give the hunger a garden

and it grieves the flowers

before they’ve even faded.

And love becomes another kind of hunger

when we ask one heart

to hold still

what nothing in this world

has ever held still.

Black butterfly,

perhaps my prayer is yours:

to find what does not wither,

what remains

when everything we’ve gathered

falls from our hands.

But what if there is nothing to find?

What if rest is not another garden?

To be captivated is still to be captured.

The beautiful face will age.

The beloved body will disappear.

The house will belong to someone else.

Even these hands

with which we reach for the world

will one day be still.

We know this,

and still we live

as if it were happening

only to other people.

Perhaps that is why

an ordinary morning can be sacred:

light crossing the floor,

someone breathing beside us,

rain against a window,

a cup still warm between our hands.

The flower is not less beautiful

because evening will close it.

The embrace is not less true

because two bodies must part.

So let us not stop loving the gardens.

Let us stop asking them to save us.

Let the flower be beautiful

without becoming ours.

Let love arrive

without a cage built around it.

Let happiness sit beside us

for however long it stays,

and when sorrow takes its place,

let it pass through too.

The black butterfly opens its wings.

For once, I do not wonder

where it is going.

I do not follow.