Butterfly

Once when I was a child

I caught a butterfly in a net

in our backyard.

It was a little thing,

white, delicate—

perhaps it was 

a cabbage moth.

I was so proud

I ran to show my mother;

she helped me shake it free

into the jar that came

with the net,

a cold jar

of clear alcohol—

the killing jar.

The butterfly fluttered

and struggled

then fell still.

I cried then

for what I’d done

because it could not be undone;

I had killed this creature,

plucked it from the sky

so I could pin it in a box

and hang it on my wall

to look at.

My mother helped me fish it out

and laid it on the porch railing;

Maybe it will fly away, she said.

We went somewhere

I don’t remember

and when we came home

it was gone.

I wanted to believe it had lived,

but I think I knew even then

that some bird, grateful for an easy lunch,

probably snatched it away,

or my mother, wishing to spare me further sorrow,

silently swept it down into the dirt

below.

How easily innocence dies;

the delicate, gossamer wings of childhood

ensnared,

drowned,

snatched away

or trampled underfoot

all because some careless fool

tried to trap it

and pin it down

so they could put it

in a box on their wall

to admire

as if it was theirs

to keep.