Sunday, December 28, 2008

Creative or insane?

You decide.

I was walking through camp and I took a mental picture. I don't mean that I have a photographic memory, I just happen to remember the image of it very, very clearly.
I took this walk several times a day, every day of the week during the summer. I took it in the dead of night and early in the dawning hours. I know how it feels, what it looks like. Then, there was something I wasn't expecting. A butterfly.
The kids brought me a butterfly they had caught. They damaged its wings and it couldn't fly anymore, so they gave it to me. I took it outside and placed it on a flowering bush in the sunlight, so it could be warm and have food before it eventually fulfilled it's lifetime expectancy of 48 hours.
I left for the afternoon. When I was walking back, I saw it again. The butterfly. My butterfly. Dead. Not only dead, but crushed. Crushed to a fine, glittering powder, melting into the dirt.
Who killed my butterfly?
I didn't kill my butterfly. It was probably a bird, or a small child.
I didn't kill the butterfly.
Did I?
If I killed the butterfly, then whoever created me killed the butterfly. My parents killed the butterfly. If they killed the butterfly, then wherever they come from killed the butterfly. Maryland killed the butterfly. America killed the butterfly. If America killed the butterfly, then everything in society is responsible for the butterfly. Civil Rights killed the butterfly. Free speech killed the butterfly. Civilization killed the butterfly. God killed the butterfly.
I killed the butterfly.
The seconds passed as I watched it fade into the dust, and I walked away. I'd walked here every day, several times a day, and this time, I remembered.

2 comments:

  1. You're clearly mentally unstable
    -Love derek

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  2. Civil rights killed the butterfly?! GODDAMMIT I KNEW THAT WAS A BAD IDEA.

    ReplyDelete