Pitch #9: Stop and Smell the Meanings

I know I am going out of order with my posted pitches, but as I reviewed my writing folder, I found this exercise and realized I had no memory of writing it. It is from the same class as the last two pitches, but I believe the idea behind this exercise was looking at multiple meanings of a word. (at least I think so?)

If you would like, let me know what you think :)

Written 3/2/2010 for my Engl 285 class.

Butterfly

He called her butterfly. She had begun to wonder exactly what he meant by it. Was it the fact that she was social, attending parties, visiting friends on the weekends, and seldom talking to her parents on the telephone? That was her assumption when she ran into him at the club. They had embraced, exchanged small talk, and he left with that word hanging in the air. Taking it as a compliment, she had smiled and waved, but as she considered it again, she could not remember the look on his face, let alone the intended meaning.

He did constantly criticize her for living her life without direction; drifting from one job to another, from residence to residence. Was it because she drifted like a leaf on the wind? He was always so consistent. The sturdy trunk of an old tree. Metaphorically, he wasn’t going anywhere soon, and she was the one who broke up with him.

She was blonde. Blonde, the buttery hair color that is like the summer bird -the butterfly-, only pretty in the sunlight. Only brave in the sunlight. Brightest in the sunlight. He criticized her for her blondeness too. Blondes are flitty, they never make up their minds, their common sense is questionable…wait, was he describing blondes or women?

Butterflies were considered thieving witches in north-western Europe. His family is English…did he see her as a thieving witch? Their relationship was brief, harsh words were exchanged, and the breakup led to that uncomfortable “elephant in the room” feeling whenever they ran into each other at parties, but that feeling had faded over the years. Those words were nothing they meant to say, and everything they never planned to. She considered the two of them civil, if nothing else.

Maybe she was too frail, inside or out. The butterfly was the spirit of the dead, a soul, a breath. She hoped he was not suggesting she looked dead. She had a pale complexion, but not anything compared to Edward Cullen and his vampire coven. She was healthy looking.

Perhaps it was the inside. He said once that he saw her social behavior as a way to cover up the deadness of her soul, the inner lackluster. Did he believe she was just a breath of her former self? Or on her last breath? Or did he hope she was on her last breath?

She did not understand.

It was just the opposite. It was his way of wishing her a long life, instead of saying he wanted her life to be over. She wasn’t a wisp of herself, but rather a bright soul, flickering in the darkness she surrounded herself with. The butterfly was his way of saying she brightened his day like summer sunshine, but she never stayed long enough to warm him.

He was saying he was a butterfly too, in a different way. He hoped another butterfly would grow between them someday. He was healed and waiting for her to alight and rest.

~Brittanie V.