The Butterfly Bandage

It’s a frantic struggle, this life. With no wars to fight and no causes to live for, all hell resides within. And when the defences are down, all poison inhaled-exhaled, chewed-spat, consumed-exhumed, they come back manifold. The hours of rest grow shorter, walls grow closer and rooms get smaller. There won’t be a point in crying because it’s taken over more than just your eyes.

But there will always be the butterflies.

Even in the dreams of hell. It is their strange hypermetropic state, I suppose. Being hidden under grandeur, revealed as scarred reptiles only close to death. In moments of distress, I conjure schools of them to decorate the face of my fears with spots of crimson and indigo, white and green, yellow and pink. And when them hounds sing their ghastly opera in the midst of those wanton hours, a butterfly somewhere will flutter yellow, fighting the usurper Black; against gravity, against lows and highs, against darkness and helplessness. And they’ll hide even then, holding their deformed bodies akimbo only to those they fight. Till everything quiets down inside, slowly seeping away, taking away bad memories, good ones, pointless ones, ones of lust, ones of anger. We’ll be left alone by butterflies and demons, by friends and foes, by everything but peace.

No song is as cherished as the silence after an evening of wars.