The wings were perfect, even moist, as if fresh from the cocoon—though this might simply have been the morning’s dampened breath, for they lay still… flightless. Their silken poetry, their symmetry in powdered color, belied the crippled juncture where death and antennae had collided, deforming sheer fragility into a chaos of legs and ochre pus. How had the wings survived so crushing an impact? He stood there, on the soft shoulder, staring (divination crucial), a wanderer—functionally mute—pausing all alone on an abandoned back road:
where wild grasses already reclaimed the asphalt’s fractures…
Perhaps it was the theme of aborted flight that drew his attention, an
airborne potential Sun-browned and prominently veined, Simon’s outstretched hands were masculine sculptures—the last two years having weathered rough patterns unique to the open road. Their strength and grace reflected, nevertheless, an androgynous quality—evident throughout the balance of his twenty-eight-year-old features. Not that his gender was questionable; his body simply reflected a certain duality—unsettling only by virtue of its being rare. Totally absorbed in this juxtaposition of hand to wing, wing to hand, he failed to notice the approach of a car (at lead-footed speed). He looked up just in time to wave a belated thumb in its indifferent wake. With the up-churned dust, despair settled quietly into Simon’s face; tears welled up to cleanse the grit away. Turning back, he resumed contemplation of the highway’s other casualty.
Two
years… Two years of wayfaring had passed. The first, devoted to forgetfulness, he had
labeled:
The Year of the Lotus
The second, Year of the Dandelion (or child’s yellow rose),
That speeding car had been only the second to pass since dawn. Simon wondered where he was… then entertained the notion of having somehow become invisible… except, late on the previous night, a woman had almost stopped. Almost. At least she hadn’t swerved while trying to lock the passenger-side door. How frightened most folks were—women, especially… but men, too. ‘Beware the terrible stranger, the hitchhiker—Bogeyman incarnate.’ Ah well, why be bitter? He alone was to blame for his cold bones and worn out soles. Besides, the early sun was like liniment penetrating Simon’s chilliness. But this butterfly, surrounded by his impressions… Was he to read its wings as a Seer interprets palms? There followed a strange ceremony. Removing the sash belt from his waist, Simon arranged it on the ground in an ellipse, encircling the dead swallowtail. He then slipped off his backpack, and, setting it aside, unbuttoned his shirt—which he carefully spread below the sash, forming a crescent with its empty sleeves. Feet together, V-fashion, he stepped from his moccasins onto the shirt front. Next he untied his drawstring pants—which dropped around his ankles—and stepping out, bare naked, assumed a cross-legged posture, smack dab in the middle of this curious configuration. He sat like this, without moving, for a long, long while…
A shudder ran through Simon, as if a tremor had rocked his very soul. The sun (quite high) sucked sweat from his pores, while shriveling the butterfly’s idle carcass, its mangled thorax detached from undamaged wings—which Simon, ever so gently, now plucked: first one, then the other, kissing both before placing each on either shoulder blade… where, soaking up perspiration, they adhered. Then, with the same slow care, he dressed… took up his pack… and walked on down the road.
|
obliterated with one indelicate stroke. Or the grim allure of fatality, in
its unfamiliar, fascinating guise. Or maybe his was a sentimental reverie, wherein beauty
transcended things mortal—like love surmounting cynicism. Then again, it was just as
likely—since the road was barren, ride prospects bleak, and the day long—that
there was little better to do than look upon this mishap at his feet. Simon looked.
Intricate capillaries that once throbbed, however imperceptibly, throbbed no more. He
knelt. Placing his hands in the dirt on either side, he compared his flesh and tendon to
the insect’s corpse; a subtle difference was theirs… merely a
heartbeat’s(?).
had been dedicated to seeing the world afresh, and had come to a close this
very morning, leaving a subtle sign (now framed by hand prints). 