I have sent you a butterfly, but you cut its wings.

and I tell you, it would be such a shame for a creature that pretty to die

Late in the afternoon, long after the groceries have been unpacked and the coriander has been rinsed and left drying beside the sink, long after the tea has gone cold because we forgot about it while discussing whether the neighbour’s new curtains are blue or grey, I find a butterfly trapped between the kitchen window and the mesh screen. It beats itself against the glass, unevenly, favouring one wing over the other. You stand beside me and watch it struggle for a moment before sliding the window open with two fingers.

I tell you, it would be such a shame for a creature that pretty to get stuck there and die. You laugh and tell me that butterfly wings are actually transparent and the blues and oranges and yellows come later, from the way light catches on thousands of microscopic scales. You explain this while the butterfly sits motionless on the edge of the frame, as though it too is listening. Then it lifts itself into the air, that same lopsided rhythm carrying it anyway, and disappears beyond the hibiscus bush. I keep thinking about what you said long after it has gone. How strange it is that beauty can depend so completely on the direction from which something is viewed, how a single beam of light can arrive whole and leave divided into colours. I wonder if love works the same way. Whether feelings arrive simple and transparent, and become complicated only after passing through the prism of another person’s mind.

There is a game I like to play when we’re together. Usually, when we’re lying in bed after a long day. The room is dark except for the streetlight slipping through the curtains, and the ceiling fan ticking faintly on its lowest setting is the only proof that time is still moving. I know what I am thinking at first, whether I remembered to send that email. Whether we need more milk. Whether it might rain tomorrow. Then I think about what you’re thinking. I imagine your thoughts moving quietly through your head while you stare at the ceiling beside me. Perhaps you’re remembering something from years ago. Perhaps you’re not thinking about anything. And from there, my mind naturally drifts further. I think about the arguments I have imagined, the endings I have prepared for. How often I have mistaken anticipation for wisdom. How many times I have received something whole and beautiful only to hold it up to a different light and mistake the change in colour for a change in substance. Perhaps when I sent you the butterfly, I sent it crooked.