Thursday, October 13, 2011

For the Butterfly Girl

The last time I saw you alive you were taking a right turn onto Mamalahoa Highway in a dark, lifted truck. You looked too little behind that steering wheel. Too slight. A wine-colored streak of blush punctuated your cheek. Your eyes were smudged with darkness carried over from your time in the City of Angels.

You were so beautiful then, in your seeking, treading lightly on that diaphanous membrane you knew might give way at any moment, send you sprawling out into the ether, untethered and falling, falling into the nowhere that threatened you every living moment.

I wonder again and again whether when I read your post you were already gone. But you had made that plaintive cry so many times, and the wolf was always in the wings, waiting, waiting. Finally, when all was said and done, you gave yourself to him and I, among all the other fools, had long since turned away from the shadow he cast by your light.

The surprise of your departure was exceeded only by our sorrow at the thought--of you alone in the universe of the living, sending a quiet message into space, your shadowy face accompanying it like a phantom messenger from the edge. A photo-shopped whisper from the lost planet of your sadness, where you had roamed for too long and to which you never intended to return.

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