A Moment

Two black dots. Two black dots, each with a white centre mirrored on dazzling orange wings. It was stunning. A butterfly resting on the window. For just a moment our two worlds touched, linked through a sheet of glass. Connected briefly before, before it flew away. Before it left. A flutter of its wings carried it free, carried it away from me, from here. It wasn’t personal, how could it be? With a beat of its wings, it was gliding away with ease and grace and I watched it go. I felt stupid to cry which only brought more tears. Stupid girl crying over stupid things I told myself.

It sailed gently on the breeze dancing between the old stone tenement buildings, untethered and carefree. Going wherever it pleased, wherever the wind carried it. My lip trembled catching a familiar bitter taste. It flew further. So far it was a speck of colour in a world of stone grey. Far down the street until it was threatening to leave the edges of my world. To fly beyond my sad little window, tucked away high up on a dark street. I scrambled round the room, desperate to keep it in sight for just a moment longer. Just a moment, I pleaded the cold stinging my cheeks as I pressed into the glass.

As it left the shade of the buildings, the sunlight at the end of the street caused its wings to sparkle even from this far away. It danced in circles and figures of eight as if celebrating, to think such beauty had passed through my street, past my sad little window. Two alien worlds coming into contact, however brief.

It was like those rare and fleeting dreams where everything was, happy. It made me happy. Despite the distance, it seemed more beautiful than ever simply because it wasn’t here. Then, just like that it swept through the iron railings bordering the park and into that open space beyond the confines of my dark little window. Beyond my street, past the boundaries of my world. It was gone. That happiness as fleeting as it was had gone with it. You can ignore a feeling, it takes time and skill but it can be done. To be numb.

I watched the spot for what felt like a long time, I don’t know quite how long. The moment I knew had inevitably come to pass but something, a willing ignorance on my part or dare I say hope had held it. Held the inevitable, the obvious, the certainty of what was to happen, it held it at bay. Held it for as long as I remained, face pressed against the glass balanced on aching legs, willing the beautiful creature to return. To come back and rekindle that brief moment. That the magic we briefly shared could last forever. That was the thing with moments, they occurred and then they ended. Cruel and kind, kind and cruel. I wiped the snot before it mingled with the tears too late to stop it wetting the glass knowing this moment was over but unwilling to let it go. Not moving from my window. Watching. Wishing.

To be a butterfly. Set adrift on the breeze, free to fly and soar. Each moment better than the last. I would swoop by and bring joy, dance among the flowers. I could have friends, friends like I once had and they would rush to greet me. Sofia, Adriana, Cristina. I knew their names, remembered their voices, soft and friendly, filled with love. It seemed like someone else's life now. Sofia had brilliant blonde hair like me. I remembered that much but her face, their faces were lost. Fading in memory like the beautiful orange butterfly with black and white dots on its wings.

The memory grew weaker, like clenching sand it slipped away until only a few grains remained. Eroded by every passing moment, every thought until, numb. Gone like so much else had. Stupid girl, crying of stupid things! Even as the tears trickled down the glass forming a cold puddle on the narrow ledge, I watched. Unmoving. Unwilling to accept that it was gone and that our moment had passed. Their faces were gone for good, no matter how hard I tried to remember but the butterfly might still come back. It had to, I needed it to.

The tears streamed until my gut hurt supressing the faint whimpers when something caught my eye, not the butterfly but an old man. He entered hobbled into the edges of my world, into view of my sad little window. He didn’t quite stroll but in the same manner it was far from a limp, it still provoked enough sympathy in passers-by to politely move aside. Smiling as they stepped from his path, some exchanging what I assumed to be pleasantries. The kind of exchanges I myself once had.

I had chattered with a charming old gossip who always let me skip her in line at the grocery store though I can’t ever recall what she said she chewed my ear off the whole time. I could recall the bright colours of fruits and vegetables, the smell of fresh bread, the handsome checkout boy who. Stupid girl! The thought had occurred so naturally that it had soured and turned bitter before it could be helped, before I could catch it. One moment that had changed so many others. The one which I tried my best to numb, to forget and yet it was the only one I could not. I could never forget his face, what he did. A moment I refused to dwell on now. I reeled from the thought, looking instead for the butterfly. Instead, my eyes again found the old man.

He was well dressed in a neat pin striped suit, a spattering of wispy hair combed neatly over a bald crown, thin framed glasses perched on a large beaky nose. He was picking his way up the street, still exchanging pleasantries as he went, thanking those who let him pass with sickly sweet smile. In the shade of the tenements on my dark little street he might have looked out of place, his brightly coloured suit contrasting the dull greys and browns of the buildings, the piles of black bin-bags ruptured by gulls, scattering their messy innards across the road. Still he ambled on.

Others on the street matched its demeanour, they too hid from the sun, hoods pulled high obscuring their faces. A woman clutching her bag tightly as she passed a group of teens who shouted after her. Fortunately, they were only shouting today. The man might have been an odd fit. A character out of place like the butterfly had been when it graced by window carried on the breeze, a stranger passing through the shade of the street to reach better places. He might have been but he wasn’t. Then, he too vanished. I didn’t look for him, rather I watched in sad and impossible hope. Not for my friends, for my family but for the butterfly because there was a chance it might find me again.

That brief moment I spent searching in vain was cut cruelly short. Some moments dragged on but it was never the good ones, the ones I wanted to. It seemed the happier a time was, the shorter it lingered. Was it the nature of such things? No, happy things did not come here, not for me. Happiness left because it had a better place to be. Occasionally it passed through, an accident dancing on the breeze or sent by some mistake which I could glimpse through a pane of glass. A glimpse of something better, something more than this small featureless room and my sad little window high up on a dark street. The door creaked open, as I knew it would, though my skin crawled at the whining screech of hinges. No skill could numb what that noise meant.

Habitually, I blinked the tears from my eyes and wiped them away discretely. Forcing a smile, I moved from the narrow window ledge as the old man from the street walked in with a warm and affectionate smile on his face, which I was never able to meet. I moved to the bed, a solitary and abused mattress burst at the seams. It might have been beautiful once I often thought, in a better time in a better place. Now it was the sole piece of furniture in a barren room, without so much as a frame to support it.

There I waited, as I often did. As I often had to do. The door clicked shut and the heavy latch slid into place with a thunk which cause my stomach to knot. If the old man noticed he made no show of it, instead he carefully undid his bowtie. Shrugged off his pin stripe suite-jacket one arm at a time, left then right. Then his shirt buttons, top to bottom. Removed his belt picking at the polished brass clasp for purchase. These moments did not pass quickly, like standing in the shadow of a wave but being unable to leave the sand. One shoe come off. Then another. His thin lips pursed into a sickly-sweet smile.

There was not a hint of malice in it, quite the opposite. It made it no more tolerable to me, perhaps less so. It was harder to hate a small kindness, but even harder to accept it. I smiled back, averting my eyes and looking anywhere to avoid meeting his. I looked everywhere else, careful to play it off as being shy. If he was so naïve, he didn’t show it and he didn’t need to hide such things, for me It was essential. Finally, removing his trousers and underwear with some difficulty he stood naked tossing a handful of notes to one side, the thin smile now an unsettling grin as he moved to join me on the solitary mattress.

Some moments seem to last forever.

The door clicked shut and the latch thunked into place. I lay in silence, as I always did. In shame, which I always felt. Helpless, as I always was. Tears wandered in thin stream down the contours of my face, creases which seemed to deepen with each passing day. Noticeable when I caught my reflection in the glass of my sad little window, in those rare moments I could bare to meet my own gaze. The mattress was never truly dry but the tears had made it wet where I lay. Stupid girl crying over stupid things I told myself again and again. Like a mantra, a record skipping over and over. It helped, in its own way. A distraction.

The tears flowed. It wasn’t the old man, or even the tiny room in which my whole world played out. He was gentle and kind compared to most others and I had long accepted that the four damp smeared walls were the borders of my existence. The girl that cried over such things had become numb long ago. Rather it was my sad little window, the window which I had watched, the window which I watched still, which I had always and would always look to in these moments laying on the damp of the mattress. I smiled and a bubble of snot expanded then burst as I chuckled quietly to myself. My tears were of pure joy because there, at the centre of my sad little tenement window, high up on a dark street, beautiful orange wings spread, was the butterfly.