Writing prompt: Many in the park are reading the white butterfly
I love that cabbage butterfly as if it were a fluttering corner of truth itself!
Tomas Tranströmer, "Streets in Shanghai"
Photograph from Wired New York
Many in the park are reading the white butterfly. Or worshipping the wrinkling God, exposing their winter-white limbs to the sun. Backs against thin towels, resting on hodgepodge quilts or supported by near-dead grass, they lie among the remains of dog shit and crushed beer cans. Four months of relative darkness, of travel wishes: the sea and sky clear, the beach unpeopled, a tropical drink supported by sand. Stuck in the city for the long haul, they celebrate the coming of spring.
They travel from studio apartments, from many-windowed penthouses, stream in from the train station, form in groups released from grubby cubicles. Maybe they are cutting school, calling in sick. It could be that they don’t have anywhere to be in the first place.
She props herself up on her elbows, surveys the landscape of bodies. Across a line felled by desire, a white butterfly floats, a promise fulfilled.