Butterflies Are Beautiful Poem by Arnab Das

The backyard cottage door opened slowly
with a screeching sound and my shadow
crawled in, on the floor as I stood by the corridor.
A mouse squeaked complaining to me for its
utter displeasure at my arrival.
The yellow bulb behind me hung from
a red and black wire, swung along lazily
with the mild breeze making the dark pattern
on the floor look somewhat mystique,
somewhat more than a shadow- another shade
of my psyche, may be.

I stepped into the room of imperturbable blackness,
and as I shut the door everything was dark and silent.
Eighteen years ago, in this very room innumerable
moments of comfort decorated the old clock
which has stopped now.

Every morning the sun rays seeped through
the sheer white curtains but years of dust made
them look like an ordered arrangement of grey screens
suspended from the wall.
The carpet beneath my feet had lost its grip and warmth,
and I was standing on a slithery slab of ice.
In the imperceptible grey light that came through
the soiled curtains made the room slowly visible
and my eyes swept through the barely perceivable
materials that were kept scattered all around.
I took a few steps toward something that looked
like a chair, and it was a chair indeed,
wrapped in a thick skin of time that grinds
everything unto dust and ashes.
However deprived of affection the room was,
in fact, the room existed in its stench damp
and still greyness, among other agonies.

I leaned on the chair, blew out the dust and sat on it.
My nostrils were flared as I breathed in the chill air
and my feet were numb and dead.
My bones tried to hold on to their places
as they rattled against each other,
and I felt my heart beating slower every moment.
My fingers were palsied and had turned greyish
and I was drifting towards a fit.
My vision was getting distorted and the grey walls
danced in front of my eyes in a marvellous frenzy.
I tried to close my eyes but it was all the same,
as if, my eyelids were a thin transparent film.
The bare clutches of the trees outside were projected
on the window panes by the headlights
of the cars that rushed into the night,
as an array of deceased claws approaching me.
My body had gone numb and all I could feel
was to be rocked against the dead-still chair.
My flesh and bones wriggled beneath my thick
skin with a violent intent to rip me inside out,
and I thought of crying aloud before my body
gets dismembered into an obnoxious heap of filth.

***
The sea repelled me.
In my life, I had loved two things passionately:
bathing in the sea, and wine.
My inability to swim, however, never let me
obliterate the margin between the sea and me,
and kept me meticulous in every step.
I always meant to let go of my heavy corpse
into the current, but my consciousness engraved
me on a firm footing into the sands beneath me,
and just like thrown out of a dream, I was
bludgeoned along the clashing tides.
I realized the sea was violent, unyielding
to my friendly intent.

At some distance, my wife sat on the shore.
A Lepidopterist by profession, she had an eye
For colour and always had her painted in a shuffled
Arrangement of million tints.She ran past the cabin
In the woods into the fern field, after an orange-tinted
Butterfly, elaborate in her spread of wings, as it were,
Fed on passion. In her obsession she followed
The butterfly as her net swung arbitrarily in the air.
I should've run after her,
Or shouldn't have let her go at all,
I had thought over, again and again.

It was the colour of her clothes,
in a stark contrast to the monotonous green
that caught my attention. May be for a fraction
Of a second, I had anticipated the worst and as
I would have probably witnessed it, I was mortified.
Her cold groans slowly became prominent and
I found her lying on the grassy floor,
One of her arms wrapped around her womb,
She kept fluttering her arms like the butterfly
Drowned in a slimy pool of blood.


She withdrew herself in the backyard cottage,
Among the thousands of her personally
collected specimen: butterflies and moths of numerous species
And colours pinned on the wall behind a screen
Of clear glass panes, some large ones preserved
In formalin jars.
I decided to talk to her, but even after my
repeated knocks at her door, she refused.
It made me anxious, and with an intention
To break into it I banged on the door with
My shoulder, kicked on it with all power
But the door stood straight. I took a few steps back
And then began to run towards the door in a
Desperate frenzy and just before I'd strike
The door, probably some invisible hand
Opened it wide. I was hurled into the room
With my uncontrollable momentum and collided
Head on with a chair.The room was filled with
Stench of stale food, mixed with the strong odour
Of urine and filth, but more than that there was an
Added stink of something very odd... something like...
Rotten flesh... rotten corpse!
It was officially accepted as a case of suicide.
A year later I married Cathy.

***

My life became miserable lately;
My second wife started accusing me
Of becoming insomniac.
For all these years I never took the backyard way.
It haunted me in my dreams and in the days as well.
But tonight there was something unusual with this place.
I waited for Cathy to go to sleep and then
I slowly walked down to the cottage.
***

The dead butterflies on the shelves
Had started wriggling, as though they were pinned.
The specimens in the jars were turned alive and
Where Lisa had hung herself, hung the grey earthen cask.
I was frostbitten with an inexplicable fear,
And through my thin transparent eyelids
I gazed at the cask. There were cracks forming on it,
Slowly but steadily, and then in a moment it was
Shredded into fragments and out came
An orange butterfly, Julia!
Elaborate in her spread of wings,
Fluttered around the room for a while
And then flew through the stolid concrete walls.
In wonder, in amazement and moreover
In a strange awe I chewed out the words: "Julia is reborn! "

It was dawn, and a soft gleam of light
Had painted the horizon afresh.
I felt purged of the shadows from the past.
The bedroom door was open and through
The passage that connected it to the rest of the house,
I saw Cathy sleeping covered in a furry blanket.
As I proceeded further, I felt uneasy
With an uncertain apprehension!
She had turned colourless, her veins protruding
Her skin in a poisonous blue tint,
And her body span across the seven feet long bed!

"Oh heavens! " I shouted and rushed into the room
But what sorcery! There laid not Cathy but Lisa,
Exactly as I had seen her hung from the ceiling,
But now with an expecting foetus! Unable to believe my eyes,
I pulled the blanket away from her body
And hundreds of orange butterflies dispersed into the thin air...