Nothing seemed right after the butterflies left. They had gone their way, their swaths of bright orange and yellow on black slipstreaming on down to Mexico. The sky seemed less blue and the clouds were grey instead of white. Nothing was the same.

We went on a picnic. It was warm out that day and we loaded the car with a blanket and a basket. I stared out the window, ignoring my blank reflection, and concentrated on the scenery that flew past. He was used to it now, I never talked anymore unless I had to. It was more than just too much effort. My words felt artificial, my smiles plastic. I rarely attempted eye contact any more because I thought he could see the shame behind them. I looked at my hands. They looked strong, the veins faintly visible beneath the skin on the backs of them. My fingers seemed long today, graceful. Very nearly like the long-past butterflies. We never had music in the car. It, too, seemed false somehow. Months ago when we rode together we would smile and sing along with the radio, gleefully shouting out lyrics to our favorite tunes, clapping our hands and car-dancing. It hadn’t faded out slowly. One day as we rode I couldn’t take it anymore. I reached over and turned the radio off. That didn’t sit too well with him. Him. I’d stopped using his name, or any name long ago.

“Why’d you do that?” he inquired.

“I just didn’t want to hear that song,” I lied. I thought maybe if I got past that one there would be no more discussion.

“Well we could have just changed the channel. That song isn’t going to be on forever.”

At this point I knew there would be trouble. We hadn’t ridden together in the car for several weeks, each of us preferring to take our own vehicles. We’d both been busy and not had much time to go out together. I’d started feeling strange about a week and a half earlier. As I did every other time when it started, I dismissed it as stress, not getting enough rest. I always deny what’s happening to me. I think each time if I just ignore it, it will go away. It never goes away.

I must have sounded wrong somehow when I spoke.

“Are you alright?”

“I’m fine.” Defensive.

“You seem as if you might be upset with something. Are you angry? You seemed fine when we left the house.”

I could feel the familiar tightness in my chest. I took a deep breath and tried to focus on breathing normally. I tried to think my heart rate down. It kept escalating. The cloud of dim unrest in the back of my mind moved forward, propelled by my physiological changes. Dammit, I thought, I need to relax. I shifted in my seat and pretended to adjust my seatbelt.

“I just have a headache is all. I’ll be okay once I eat something.” I hoped this would assuage him and keep him from asking any more questions. As hard as I tried to keep my voice even, I could tell that I was beginning to sound terse. That fact frustrated me even more.

He didn’t say anything else. He sighed deeply and kept driving. Fine, I thought, let him think I’m angry. My other nature was taking over now. Better for him to think that than know what I’m really thinking.

What I was really thinking was that I hate myself. I hate the way a situation that might seem benign to another can send me into a frenzy of self-doubt. I hate the way normal circumstances can suddenly turn me against myself. I hate the way that I walk around keeping secrets because there aren’t any words for what I feel. Those things were bouncing around in my mind, creating an aura of sound that only I can hear, when I suddenly became aware of his voice, elevated, coming toward me.

“…me know for Heaven’s sake. We’ve only been married six months and the past two weeks I feel like you’ve been cold toward me. I don’t understand what I’ve done. Are you bored at home? Do you miss your family? Tell me. I love you and I want to help.”

I listened, dumb. My fingers wove between one another restlessly. I really didn’t know what to say. I didn’t even know what to feel. Except angry.

“I’ve…I’ve just been a little out of it, is all. I think I’m coming down with something. I had a little fever the other night.” This was nominally true. My temperature had been 99.1 degrees. Hardly a fever but it was higher than normal. In my mind this justified everything. He wouldn’t be able to refute that. He sighed again and said no more.

That had been the first day without the radio.

Now he knew not to question me about the silence. Many more conversations followed this one, in the car and at home. He was too private to want to talk about it in a restaurant or anywhere else we could be overheard. I had hoped he would understand eventually, it wasn’t that I didn’t want to talk to him. It wasn’t that I didn’t want him to touch me. I was busy. I was tired. The couch was more comfortable and besides, I could watch tv there long after he had gone to sleep. I had things on my mind and I had to work it out.

At first these reasons pacified him. After all, I was away from my family and everything was unfamiliar. Not that I’d ever had a problem adjusting in the past. Then again, I’d never been married before so theoretically, I had an excuse.

He began to worry when I slept too much. When my notepad and pen sat too long in the same spot without a word being written he gently queried me about how I was feeling. My guitar collected dust in the corner as I told him night after night I didn’t feel like playing, and the playful duels we had enjoyed became scarce. I had hoped, really, that it would be different this time, with him, but the result was the same. The more he probed, the more irritated I became. I liked to keep my problems, those problems, to myself. In his eyes there was a lot of confusion as he found me more often home with the curtains drawn and in my pyjamas. After a while, he stopped asking me. I tried so hard to resist snapping at him but my tone of voice became ever more apparent. I think I had finally convinced him that I just had to think about some things.

Now, a couple of weeks later, there we were in the car, going for a picnic in the same field where we had seen the Monarchs. We parked and solemnly gathered our things from the car. He walked ahead of me, carrying the heavy basket. I followed, with the blanket and the wine. Not a word was spoken since we left home. Wordlessly he indicated the spot where we were to settle, sitting the basket down on the ground and reaching for the blanket. Feeling shamed, I handed him the wine instead and shook the blanket open, spending too much time adjusting it, smoothing it out, straightening the edges and avoiding any anomaly. This was my penitence. Just a little bit of it. I focused on this for far too long, and at some point he had stepped onto it and put the basket and the wine there. I looked up at him a moment and our eyes met. It hurt me so badly to look into his face that I immediately looked back down and then I stood upright and pretended to look into the distance, turning my head and shading my eyes. I felt it looked innocuous enough.

For a time we remained that way, me standing at the edge of the blanket, eyes toward the sky and gazing at nothing. He stood scant feet away from me, our repast at his feet, him looking seemingly over my shoulder. Or maybe at me. I couldn’t be sure. I was studying a bird.

“I’m glad I tried this wine. It isn’t so bad. Do you like it?” His words came out nearly timid. It was the first speech between us in over an hour. It seemed as if he were trying the words on and the lilt in them fell flat.

I looked at the wine in my cup, which he knew I hadn’t touched. I stared at it, willing an answer to come to me. Words came like shards of glass, cutting me on their way out of my mouth. I didn’t even know what tone of voice to use.

“I…” was all that came out. And even that didn’t sound convincing. He inclined his head toward me, trying to engage my eyes without seeming too obvious. His eyebrows rose a little, then a little more as I stalled on an answer.

“I…”

I felt like I was being smothered. The fog started moving in my head again and the dull sky, off-white clouds, the grass and the trees, even the sounds around me began to recede until I no longer perceived them. All I saw was the blanket in my periphery, the food and utensils, his legs and feet, and the cup of wine at the center of it all. I remained silent. In my mouth the food was dry that day and the wine was bitter. Like me.

That night, feeling guilty, I lay in bed with him. Even though it was warm out, I wore my thick flannel pyjamas, and clung to the edge of the bed. I felt like a stranger. It was his bed anyway, I just moved into it when we married. I was so uncomfortable I couldn’t sleep. I craved the hard back and soft cushions of the sofa. I needed to curl up against something that wouldn’t ask me any questions. I wanted to stare mindlessly at the television and think about nothing. Here, in the silence, all I could do was think. I thought he had gone to sleep, so I waited until his breathing was slowed and steady. He kept his hands to himself now, an invisible line of demarcation in the middle of the bed kept him on his own side. I slid the covers from me, making sure not to disturb him, and put on my glasses. Before I could get across the room, however, he spoke. He had been awake too.

“I don’t think I can take much more of this.”

Swallowing back a sudden swell of tears I whispered without even turning, “I want to go home.”

Routine became my comfort the next few days. I had a steady regimen. I woke in the late morning or early afternoon and watched television. I went out to get the mail. I ignored the telephone and systematically erased any messages from people inquiring whether I wanted to go out, or come over, or have guests. I checked emails, dreading having to open any letter with a subject like that read “Where are you?” A little while before my husband came home each day I would prepare his dinner. When he ate I would go outside and sit at the bistro table and chain smoke while looking at some piece of literature. Very rarely did I actually comprehend or even notice what I was reading. I would venture back into the house after about a half-hour to clean the dishes and then camp out in the guest room. Even through my haze of despair, I didn’t feel it was right to deny him the use of his own house. After all, I hadn’t paid for any of it.

I started to realize what a foolish idea it had been to get married. What had I been thinking, joining myself to another person for, presumably, the rest of our lives? How could I expect him to deal with what was going on inside me? What had been the point of those vows anyway? I became bitterly mad at myself for failing to take care of my secrets in the proper manner. Apparently the proper manner was keeping myself at enough of a distance from other people so that I could not be reasonably expected to talk about what was troubling me. I had fouled up royally this time and it could be fixed, but with no small amount of time, money, and hurt feelings. I had been so horribly thoughtless, I knew, that I had married without taking into consideration that this thing, which affected me, would be part of his life too. How could I have done that to him when all he had ever done for me was take such good care of me? He spoiled me. And I had repaid that with this damnable sickness of mine. I knew the answer to that.

I got up one day just after he left for work. For a long time now he knew that I lay awake on the couch, pretending to sleep while he prepared to leave. That day was no different, except I actually got up. I called the bank to verify my account balance. I had quite a bit of money in there, owing to his ingenious management of my money and his generosity. I felt a pang of guilt and realized I would have to figure out just how much of this money was his before I went withdrawing willy-nilly. I made a flurry of telephone calls and felt satisfied that by the end of the day, this problem would be solved. I got dressed but decided to forego the makeup, I just didn’t feel up to it. Hell, “dressed” meant I had on different sweats than I wore to sleep the night before. I started with laundry. Even through my funk, I continued with the household duties because he was, after all, supporting me. I had a guilt complex about that so I decided to get into a habit of being productive as I could around the house. Besides, it’s so much easier to berate myself when I’ve got a scrubbing rhythm going.

I separated the clothes and started washing. As the clothes washed I went through the closet and pulled out all my clothes that I had bought myself folded them neatly, stacking them on the bed. The ones he had bought, I had saved all the tags from, noting on the tag if the price was different than marked by some lucky happenstance. Those tags I gathered and took them downstairs to the table where I scribbled on paper dollar amounts and little notes. Caught up in my calculations, I failed to notice that the washer had stopped and it had been an hour since. I jumped up and put in the next load, then headed to the kitchen to check the pantry and refrigerator to make a grocery list. I tried to think of all the things he liked, and headed to the dining room table to clip coupons for those items. I felt a rising tension in my stomach. I quelled it by washing the windows and folding clothes. His went into the closet, mine went onto the bed. I lined up my shoes by the door and scarcely noticed the passage of time.

By the time I glanced at the clock I knew it was near time for him to come home. I rushed into the kitchen to fix his dinner. When the food got to a good start, I went to toss some more clothes into the dryer. On the way to take the clothes to the bedroom I saw out of the corner of my eye the pile of coupons and paper clippings on the dining room table. I threw the clothes onto the bed and sighed exasperatedly, determining to fold the clothes later. On my way down the stairs I heard him come through the door. He was early.

For a moment I just stood there. I wondered if the truth would be written across my face.

I heard pot lids lifting, the refrigerator open. I inhaled deeply then went into the kitchen. He glanced at me, unsure of what to say. This was unusual, my not having diner finished.

“Did you go somewhere today?” he asked, looking at my clothes.

My mouth opened and nothing came out. I pressed my lips together and shook my head, attempting a half-smile. I started to make a plate for him and he stood there looking at me curiously. My discomfort must have become obvious, because he finally turned and went to get changed. Several minutes later I went to the dining room with his dinner, only to discover he wasn’t there. I left the food on the table for him and wandered into the living room to find something to read. And there he was.

He was sitting in an armchair, staring blankly at something in his right hand. It took a moment for me to recognize it. The array of tags, calculator, bank papers was visible. The only thing that I couldn’t see on the table was a scrap of blue paper on which I had written “Flight 1387 – Las Vegas 7:30 Tues.”

“Were you going to tell me? Or did you leave this for me to find out by myself?” His voice was soft and his words, though slow and measured, seemed to rush out, as if he were deflating.

I rushed to the coffee table and began gathering the papers, the tags, the pen. As I was reaching for the calculator his hand gripped my wrist, not hard. I tried to pull away but he held me firm.

He spoke again, this time even more slowly. I became frightened because his tone of voice never changed. “When…were…you…going…to…tell…me?” I looked down at his hand and noticed how his fingers were so slender, graceful. He had been playing guitar much longer than I had. I flexed my fingers slowly, non-threateningly. I looked at the shape of my fingernails and the pink color beneath the opacity. I twisted my mouth to the side and chewed on my lower lip.

I waited for an explosion of anger. I closed my eyes and settled into the couch, his hand still on my wrist. I breathed in slowly, out slowly, just like I taught myself when I was a child. I completely relaxed my hand and expected at any moment to be jerked to my feet and dragged somewhere for an argument. I kept waiting. So did he.

“I have endured weeks of not speaking. We don’t even sleep in the same room. We don’t eat together, we don’t go anywhere, and if I so much as look like I might accidentally brush against you passing you in the hallway you flatten yourself against the wall like a cat. If you’re going to leave me, I am entitled to know. I want to know why. I want to know why you won’t talk to me. If you need to go so badly I won’t stop you, but I’m your husband and I’m have the right to know before you leave why you’re going.”

Still he spoke so softly, calmly, almost defeated. Before I knew it the familiar anger had risen in me and I snatched my hand from his. I reached for the scrap of paper but he pulled it away from me and kept it out of my reach. His lips tightened and I could hear his breathing get harder.

“I have done everything in my power to take care of you. I have never yelled at you, called you out of your name, or deprived you of your freedom. You have the liberty to do anything in the world you want. If you wanted to go home and visit, you could have told me.

“Look at me. Look me in the eyes and tell me you’re not leaving. I saw the clothes on the bed, the shoes and belongings gathered together. Were you going to finish packing before I came home and hide everything? Were you going to leave while I was at work Tuesday?” He was beginning to sound upset. I had raised my head as much as I could bear to and studied his mouth as he talked. My wall of denial was rapidly crumbling. I could very nearly feel tears in my chest and it hurt. I swallowed hard. I wasn’t going to let him see me cry. I could manage this with dignity.

I managed a tiny whisper. With my hand I motioned toward the blue paper and the only noise I made was a barely audible “I…”

“You what?” He questioned in a tone of voice so tender my heart rent. His teeth were so white and straight and even, his lips looked so soft. His chin was so strong and I blinked hard, squeezing my eyes tight each time. Equally tenderly, his hand caught my chin as I sought to stare at the floor, and he pulled my face up until I was looking at him. I clamped my eyes shut. The strangling feeling was coming to me, layering itself atop the feeling of tears. I thought in a moment I would begin gasping for air. My entire body tensed with panic. Fight or flight ran through my mind and I nearly laughed at the absurdity of being able to name such a primal reaction while immersed in it. Instead of laughing I released a choked sob when his thumb caressed my cheek gently as he held my chin. It slid slowly along its path, the way it would have if he loved me. The way it would have if he wanted me to stay. If he could understand why I couldn’t speak or smile any more.

When I opened my eyes again he was looking at me with sadness etched into his face. Everything was clear until I blinked. Then the water took over and I couldn’t hold back anymore. Even as I felt tears sliding down my cheeks I chastised myself for being weak.

I know he thought he made a breakthrough. And for a few moments, I really wanted that to be the case. But I started thinking. How could he possibly know what’s going on? How could he understand? What am I even going to say to him? And in that minute I knew that I wasn’t going to be able to tell him what I was dealing with.

I shook my head to get him to move his hand away from me. I couldn’t endure a loving touch right then. Or maybe ever again. My mind raced as I tried to find a combination of words that would be meaningful and convey what I wanted to say. I looked around the room and realized what I was going to be leaving. A pang of heartache made itself evident to me.

“I’ll make sure your dinner’s ready when you get home Tuesday.” My voice was uneven and I let my eyes linger on the floor, unable to look at him. I knew he would be hurt and possibly angered that I still wasn’t explaining my actions to him. He was.

“And that’s all you have to say?”

I stopped at the door and forced myself to look at him. His mouth was slack, his eyes glazed. He wasn’t even looking at me, just staring ahead at some phantom. Coward that I am, that was the moment I had finally accumulated enough courage to send a message to him. But his eyes did not meet mine, and he could not see my unspoken plea when I choked out “I miss the butterflies.”

That night I sat on the back patio for hours, rereading the same passages in a book. I was afraid to enter the house even to wash the dishes. I wasn’t afraid of him, so much, as afraid of facing the pain I had caused. Late into the night I went indoors. The television was off and the living room was dark.

Her breath was coming in high pitched rasps between cracked bloody lips. She’d lost a heel at some point. A stitch of massive proportions was tearing its way up her side. She had to keep running, she could still hear them behind her. She kicked off both shoes and held the little straps in her left hand as she ran. Her right hand was charcoal black and it felt cold as ice. That was something to ponder when she was safe. Right now she had to keep running.
Where the hell could she go? She stopped for a moment to gasp a few breaths and to have a look at her surroundings. Pretty little townhouses and white picket fences. A dog started barking at her from behind a high wooden fence. She heaved violently as the stitch stuck its way into her stomach. She drew in a long whistling breath and carried on running. Her feet were stinging now from the pretty paved streets. She grimaced in pain as she stumbled and felt her right ankle click. She carried on running. She had no choice. If they caught up, she was deadmeat.
How dare they? She became angry. Furious. Her right hand clenched hard and her once fine nails dug into her palm. She squeaked in pain. She got her second wind. Her lungs heaved as she sucked in huge gasps of air and a burst of speed spread to her feet and she surged forward.
What have I done? What can I do to change this?
Nothing! Keep running! Find somewhere to hide!
She kept running, scanning the homes around her for a shed or a partially open garage. This was subburbia, people trusted each other. There had to be somewhere she could huddle until the mob passed her by.
She stumbled again, this time falling hands first into a hedge. The sharp sticks cut and tore and she had to muffle her shrieks. She extracted herself and saw she was in a small garden. Next to the large white double story house was a little wooden wendy house.
She stopped to listen for the pack behind her. There. In the far distance. At least they didn’t have dogs this time.
She slunk across the freshly mowed lawn towards the wendy house, listening carefully for any noise from the house.
It wasn’t locked. Thank heavens.
Her legs buckled as she closed the little wooden door behind her and she collapsed on a stack of compost bags. She was safe. For now.
Finally, the tears came.

It was on a Wednesday that Jeff first noticed. His back began to ache as if he’d done a days hard labour. Terrible spasms began that night, as he lay in bed. On Thursday morning, he could hardly move. His eyes were gummed shut and they burned. Jeff thought perhaps he had the ‘flu.
He called in sick on Thursday and curled up in a miserable ball in bed, after dosing himself up with Corenza C and chewable vitamin C tablets.

Thursday passed in a blur. But the pain he felt on Thursday was nothing compared to the pain he felt on Friday morning.
His shoulderblades felt like they were grating against each other. His spine would twinge and sieze up. His entire body ached and his skin began to tingle and then became so dry it itched with maddening thoroughness.

Friday night was sheer misery. Saturday morning was pain beyond anything he had ever experienced in his entire 32 years of life. He sweated and shook and cried and moaned. Then he discovered that his hair was falling out in huge tufts. His tongue was swollen in his mouth and he could not swallow any water. His hands and feet were swollen and felt like they were being stretched on a rack. His knuckles felt like they were going to pop right off. But all this was nothing compared to the horrific pain in his back. His shoulders.
He begged for mercy in unintelligable grunts.
His skin flaked off in large snakelike pieces. What was revealed to Jeff was terror in itself. He was blue. Not a pale blue of being cold or of not being in the sun. No, this was real blue. Eggshell blue. Sky blue. Perhaps his eyes were playing tricks on him. At least his eyes no longer hurt.

Jeff could not move from his nest in the blankets on his bed and had thus been unable to pick up the telephone. He was sure someone had knocked on his door, but he couldn’t be sure. His eardrums thrummed constantly, like there was a breeze blowing permanently next to his ear. His jaw ached from clenching against the pain. At least he still had his teeth.

Saturday night he fell into oblivion. His mind floated above as his body writhed in agony. In a detached way he watched as the space between his shoulderblades ripped and tore and blood sprayed everywhere. He felt no pain at all. In fact, he felt awe as he watched two enormous pieces of bone wrench out of his back. Jeff was not good with blood, so he was not lucid for the rest of the experience.
If he had been, he could have watched as sinew and muscle spun onto these protruding bones like cloth being woven on a loom. Long strands of tissue and bloody veins coiled around the muscles. Nerves flittered across the surface and dug their way in. Then the skin began to form, wet and sticky at first, then drying like paint. Shimmering blue skin. Jeff missed the incredible sight of these bony limbs stretching out behind his blue body, bones cracking in his shoulders, muscles tearing on his back and sides. Then the soft lightening of the blue limbs, soft downy white. And then the feathering. Long white strong feathers, like an eagle. His muscles and skin healed while this happened.

On Sunday morning, Jeff woke up feeling like he was going to be alright. He took a deep breath and opened his eyes. Everything was crystal clear around him. His lungs filled with a huge breath. He glanced down at his stomach and saw rippling muscle. Rippling blue muscle. Blue skin. His mind spun and he rolled over to the side of his bed and dry vomited. The heaves nearly took him off the bed and as he flinched to avoid falling he felt the great weight on his back. Jeff looked over his shoulder and saw the gigantic white feathered wings.
Jeff curled up in a fetal ball and cried.
He heard music. Song. Heartbreakingly beautiful.
He heard someone saying his name and he opened his eyes.
There stood a woman. A blue woman. With wings slightly raised behind her. She said his name and he heard music when she spoke.
He sat on the edge of his bed as this winged blue woman told him what had happened to him and why.
She asked him if he understood and he just looked her.

“A great battle, you say?” said Jeff, eventually.
He heard music when he spoke.

Grief.

The wind has calmed some. The tree outside my window is more at rest. The rain is coming down now, light and fresh.
Cozy is sprawled out in front of the fire. I don’t think one little cat could take up much more space than she is.
Badger and Doc are curled around to either side of her, their wet paws letting off a little steam as they dry. I might sleep here, in my chair. I am content.
Of course if I move, Badger and Doc will leap up and rush to the door barking. They’ve been doing that for a few days now. I don’t know why.
We’ve had no visitors for weeks. Not since.
Maybe they think you are coming back?
Oh wait, we have had one visitor. Alice came by. Two days ago I think. Maybe more. I can’t quite recall.
This is of course part of the problem. She looked at me like she was waiting for me to say something important. I really didn’t know what she wanted.
She brought me supplies. She told me that she was going away for a little bit. She said I must conserve my wood, unless I wanted to go out and cut my own.
I’m shaking again. Only Doc notices this time.
His little shaggy head lifts from the carpet and he eyes me for a moment, then he drops it back down and sighs gently.
What was I waiting for?
The kettle?
No. I can hear nothing from the kitchen.
I was waiting for something. I’m sure I was.
I’ve spilled ink on the blanket over my knees. Ink? When was I using ink? My right hand has ink stains as well. Was I writing?
Waiting for you. I am waiting for you. You said you would be back in an hour.
Was that today? No. That was a long time ago. Months.
The chair creaks as I change position. The fire snaps.
I’m still waiting.