Ariana Litten
My Greatest Treasure
On a wall inside my room
Hangs a Polaroid from long ago.
March 4th is the day—
The date handwritten below.
Among this photo
There are many things:
An alligator hand bag
And a seventeen hundred dollar ring.
If this house were to catch fire,
There is one thing to be had.
The Polaroid, inside my room,
Is the treasure I would grab.
In the photo there are two butterflies.
One is black; the other is blue,
Resting on a wicker chair.
You have never seen a more perfect two!
The wings of the blue
Are like a soft cotton sweater,
Untouched by a cruel child’s hand,
Not one sticky finger.
Green eyes so bright,
Long legs with toes dipped in black.
Its arm reaches for the other,
And the other reaches back.
Beside the blue, the black sits tall,
Wings wrinkled and tattered,
Shattered remnants of the past.
You can see the blue across its back.
Each blue spot has a unique shape—
One like a kidney, one like a lung.
Many others are scattered across
Like music notes in a song.
There is a scar
On the left side of its chest.
On the same side there is a gap,
Where the blue’s head does rest.
The mature black butterfly,
With antenna shortly clipped,
Sits elegantly in the crowd,
Teaching the other how to be missed.
Oh how sweet ignorance must be!
To be blind with eyes wide open!
To hear a hundred words,
But not one to be spoken.
However, this was not the case.
The black taught the blue many things
But most importantly
How to fly with grace.
Don’t roam the streets at night;
They will assume you to be a moth!
Fly where people will see you;
Let them admire your wings, at your own cost.
“Never let them touch you!” she would say.
That blue will fade to black!
That beautiful blue sweater
Will be stripped right from your back.
Remember to rest on the roses!
The creator made them too!
Stay close to other butterflies,
Ones just like you.
Now, observe a butterfly.
It has no home.
Don’t look away for just a moment,
For the next it will be gone.
But unlike that photo
That has begun to fade,
The memory of that black butterfly
Will never go away.
