Like Butterflies in the Storm

I still remember watching you ascend the ancient steps carved from the sun bleached rock of that Mediterranean isle. The Summer sun beating down harshly and casting small fingers of shadow where the overhanging olive trees offered up their paltry shade like a beggar sharing his sole possessions. Climbing up and up, the air abuzz with the sound of insects and birds and the distant, faint and almost inaudible crash of waves against the cliffs far below. And then your laugh, as you climb, with your legs, pale like alabaster, stretching forth from beneath the summer dress with each ever more exhausting step. You turned back to me, a smile spread across your face like an equator of positive emotion and I took your hand in mine before we finally emerged at the base of the village square. The buildings untouched for centuries, a place where time had paused in poverty and refused to move forward. A place frozen and yet where life had continued the same and would continue to do so forever. 

We wandered through the small market, amongst the stalls selling trinkets and fruit, stopping here and there to investigate the wares. A magnet emblazoned with some cheap mass produced image and crusted with old glue that coated its rear. Oranges and lemons the size of a heavyweight boxer's fist. Miniscule pastries with calorific contents ten times what their size should command. We bought none of it and instead your gaze fell upon a brooch of silver and yellow and shaped like a butterfly. I paid with the few coins in my pocket and pinned it to you, the heat of the air matching the brightness of its colour. 

We continued exploring the few streets away from the square, narrow capillaries that spread out between the white washed walls of the buildings. Furrowed in their centre and stained with the years of rainfall and detritus that had flowed down them, like mountain streams carrying debris down to the sea. 

We found a place with a view of the bay where far below the dots of fishing boats swarmed like sparrows turning in the air. The branches of trees offered more shade here and there and a pockmarked sunshade tied roughly between the trunks gave some respite from the late afternoon sun. Seated at a table constructed from an upturned barrel and stools too small for adults we ordered drinks from the bar and whiled away the rest of the day. Talking of nothing in particular, nothing that mattered, nothing that would mean anything once it had been said and instantly forgotten but would one day form a small part of this memory of that time. 

As we sat back, sipping the cheap drinks from cracked glasses, we watched the sun begin to dip over the horizon and sink into the ocean. The sky lit up like a flame, pink, red, orange and gold, as Apollo began sinking beneath the distant waves. I caught the reflection of the end of that day in the lens of your sunglasses, I photographed you. I froze you in that moment. With a smile upon your face and the heavens in your eye, captured for all time for me to keep.

I still remember the heat of the day giving way to the cooler evening. The way the light breeze whipped up from the expanse of azure far below caught your hair, dancing it around your head. We stayed until there was no more day, until the light became blue with dusk and the stars began to appear like windows being opened one by one far above. Once again walking through the now deserted alleyways, returning to the square where the stalls had stood earlier that day but now nothing but the garbage bags remained behind ready to be taken away. Crossing through and back to the staircase, carefully and slowly walking back down and down, until it felt like we were descending from the heights of Sinai. And finally at the bottom, You looked back up the climb, back toward where we had spent the day and we kissed, there under the shining moon. 

We made love that night beneath the mosquito netting that hung like a cloud above the sea of bedsheets. Your skin felt like smooth, soft marble, your long, dark hair falling down almost to the small of your back resembled a flowing stream as it moved in waves with each movement of our bodies. A cooling sea breeze drifted in through the open window and raised the hair on my arms which fell around you as our exhausted bodies, damp with sweat, collapsed into a deep sleep. When I awoke you had rolled onto your side with your back to me and I watched as your shallow breath made your body rise and fall gently in the pale dawn light. My hand lightly touched you where the shoulder blade protruded and I silently swore, not for the first time, that I would always be here for you. Always.

I remember the argument, the raised voices and the tears that ran like the Po, from their source at your puffed and swollen pink eyes and slowly meandering their way down the banks of your cheeks, red with fury and sorrow. No I don't remember the argument at all, what I remember is the raised voices, the anger, the pain, the futility of my apologies for something that could not be forgiven but not words themselves, just the scene. I remember it like an understudy waiting in the wings, watching everything unfold before them as someone plays the character they have practised to perform, unable to do anything as it replays again and again each night. 

I remember how I'd hurt you, not physically of course but much, much worse. Like a spear through the chest when infidelity is revealed, an explosion of all of that emotion that is so close to love and explodes forth like the bursting of a swollen dam. Door upon door was slammed in the house as like a whirlwind you rushed through the building. Blowing from room to room and collecting what little you could carry, essentials for a journey that was neither planned nor truly desired. You told me that you didn't care where you went just as long as I wasn't there and when you returned at an unspecified date I had better not be here either. Then with a crash of lightning the final door was closed between us, I watched helplessly as the pale figure of your body strode into the night. Sheets of rain obscured my view until headlights lit up like a fire igniting in the gloom and then all I could see were the needles of rainfall as they crossed the beams that were reaching out and splitting the darkness ahead.

I remember the feeling of the glass in my palm, the small imperfections like the cracks between tectonic plates, emphasised by the silence of my thoughts as my fingers ran across it. The liquid is not as hot and burning as it normally would be, perhaps it's the numbness of senses that makes it feel neither hot nor cold and give off the flavour of nothing but ashes. The glass had been handed to me by someone in a uniform of some kind, nondescript and with a face that was faceless. A person who only exists in a dream but is impossible to remember details of once you wake up. Even their voice sounded like the echoes of a ghost, as if someone were whispering in a room at the end of a corridor. I stared blankly down at the glass, the amber liquid inside moving gently back and forth like the lapping of the tides as something important was said.

The drive to the accident site was one of silence. Staring dumbfoundedly out of the rain streaked window as the car made its way twisting this way and that through the narrow lanes, the headlights briefly illuminating here and there the great oceans of water pooled up and often parting like the wake of a tanker as the vehicle pushed through in the darkness. In the distance I saw the illumination of a warning triangle, several emergency vehicles, their lights flashing blue and calling out like a lighthouse warning of rocks and danger. Several figures stood around, a line of tape spread across to restrict access and high visibility guards stood to attention in the downpour. The door of the car was opened and I stepped out, as if I was in a dream I could not wake from. 

The first thing that hit me was the perfumed air, the smell of extinguished flame, of ashes, of once hot but now cooled metal and the petroleum scent of ruined machinery. Ahead in the near distance was a car, it took a moment before I could comprehend what it was as it was upturned like a giant tortoise that had fallen and could not right itself. One of the wheels was still rotating, slowly turning and turning like the hands of a clock ticking down and counting out fate. The twisted metal of the undercarriage steamed as the raindrops fell upon it, a light hiss sound was all I could concentrate on even as strangers attempted to speak. Their voices were nothing but a fog, a cloud of noise around me that was so enveloping that I couldn’t tell I was within it. Twinkling shattered glass lay about all over, scattered like a great galaxy of stars across the whole scene and there amongst the debris lay something else.Its shape was dented, its colour faded, its splendour gone. I crouched down and grasped at it, and looked back up at the devastation holding it in my palm. As the steam rose up from that scene of ruins it took upon the form of a flock of yellow butterflies, rising up from the wreckage, moving as one up and high into the night sky. I stared into the black, following them ascending to the heavens and I remembered that always was valueless, I wished I had never spoken a word.

August 2021