Longing for Butterflies

Hey, it's Sunday Morning.

I grew up without seasons.

I only knew how the body felt: hot most times, wet for a month until Mother's Day, cool and sweet at the end of the year. I didn't know spring by name, only by what it brought: butterflies. Tiny ones, big ones. White ones and little yellow ones that got caught in car grills.

I've been thinking about them lately, not in a metaphorical way. At least, not at first.

I'd chase them, the way children do, believing that the world was full of magic you could hold in your hands.

And then—Mauricio Babilonia.

In One Hundred Years of Solitude, Mauricio's arrival was always preceded by a swarm of yellow butterflies. They fluttered into the room before he did.

His love was silent, almost secret. He didn't ask for anything. He simply appeared, again and again, outside a forbidden window. He showed up quietly, fully, vulnerably.

That kind of presence follows you.

But his ending was tragic.

The mother saw the swarm of butterflies outside her daughter's window and assumed the worst. She called for him to be chased.

Love exposed him. Mauricio ran, fell, and died.

And still, the butterflies kept coming, as if to say: You mattered, Mauricio.

I think about what follows me, and wonder if mine would keep coming if I stopped running.

Not the burdens we try to escape. No. I mean the beautiful things.

The swarm that precedes me—the one I've learned to hide: the gleaming smile under my silence when I witness my kids' strong moral compass. The times I cried thinking of my late father, the evidence of a tender life.

The things worth being seen for, even at the risk of being exposed, even when they give us away. I'm re-learning to let them follow me again.

Because the butterflies don't lie. They know who you really are, even when you've forgotten.

And you, what beautiful things are you still running away from?