BUTTERFLIES OF BROKEN GLASS
Kara Ater

To go back and touch a butterfly
Suspended in space
Frozen in time
Every step echoes in the vastness of the eternity that surrounds me
Can eternity exist within one moment?
I suppose it’s possible if that moment were still
Dead
Forever
Like a butterfly pinned through the heart
Unfolded and still…
Its beauty captured in its final moments…
Splayed out…
Spread out…
Dead…
Was it worth it?
To be beautiful forever? Preserved forever? Sealed forever? Untouched forever?
If I were to beat my fists through the glass display, would it fly away?
Would it be worth anything then?
Would it be lost or forgotten?
Would anyone notice?
Would anyone care?

I see myself in the reflection
And palm to palm I embrace the image
Infinity breached and bridged through naught but fingertips
Forever in both directions
Please
I’m begging
Let me touch her
Let me find her
Even if one glimpse
For one moment
One moment in forever
Forever is all I have
And a moment is all I need....

I beat my fists against the glass
It flies and freezes around my face
Glassy wing beats
Ghosts of butterflies
The air is so still
Time is still
So quiet…

Even the sunlight seems gray…

Stone figures, pale and cold, greet my waking eyes
So lifelike
And yet so dead
Look at all the children dancing
The movements captured even in their stillness
Every fold of every dress
Every lock of ruffled hair
Caught up seamlessly in the tendrils of time
So lifelike…
So dead…

I move silently amongst the figures
Careful not to touch
For fear the spell might come undone
No
I can’t touch
I mustn’t touch

Shhhhh

There…

On the edge of the field
Crouched carefully and quietly
Tucked away behind the stems of roses

I hate roses….
Such deceitful flowers…

There she is…

Hidden behind their lying faces

A little girl
At last

Am I too late?
Do I have time?
All the time in the world
This world
Is she injured?
Is she crying?
Why does she crouch and crawl so?
Why does she cast such a cautious eye?
Oh I’ll never forget those cautious eyes
Captured so carefully
Carved so expertly into the grayness
Marshlights in her misty mask of frozen falling tears
Failing dreams
Floundering hope...
Were she in full motion dancing about the flower bed
I do not think it’d do her justice
Even in the wake of this poor frozen doll
This vibrant death
This plague of stillness
What is she staring at?
Nothing
Nothing at all
Maybe that’s what she’s staring at
Nothing
Is that what’s wrong?

The butterfly…

There it is

Frozen flitting about her face
Oh you foolish thing
Why would you hang there so?
What could you have been doing that was…
………

There…
You…
She was staring at you
She is staring at you
You breathless butterfly

I thought…

Oh you evil mocking thing
Can you not see the pain etched on her face?
Can you not feel the heat burn in that gaze?

Look at her!

My voice echoed chaotically in the silence…
I paused……
…….
You….
You, who feeds on pretty faces!
You, who carries the colors of the world on weightless wings
Fluttering about for all to see
Your mocking garb!
It was you!
You robbed this world of color!
You skimmed its light on your fragile back and carried it away!
But it was too heavy for you! You dropped it! You simpleton! You idiot!
You dropped it and it shattered into a thousand pieces!
How dare you!
Can you not see she is hurt enough!
Hiding amongst rows of actors in their pretty costumes and masks!
Daggers hidden under their blood-stained clothing!
Oh what ugly faces lie beneath!
Stupid roses! Oh how I hate roses!
A gauntlet of thorns and ebon hearts beneath a crimson countenance!
I hate them!
How long will the world dance around her and not notice that stare?
How many times will the world turn before anyone realizes she’s there?
It never stopped.
They never came.
This moment died on deaf ears and still hands

Oh apathy…

What vampyric crime have you committed now.
If only I had known…
If only I had seen beyond their ruse
If only I had known she was hiding there…
With no one to care or share or sooth that aching glare.
That longing stare…

IS ANYONE THERE!

.............

Anyone…

Can I not but reach out and brush away those frozen tears…
Can I not but reach out and hold her to my breast
Even if just for a moment…
Can I not whisper into her ear sweet words of comfort
Telling her everything will be fine
Help will come
You will not be alone forever…
I glare at the butterfly....

You…
You left her alone
You surfed the skies she could not reach
You leeched the bittersweet juices from the faces of liars…
They all lied to her…
You fed her those lies…
You held out your hand, your hope, and your beauty and then you stole away again.

VILLAIN!
……………

Oh such fragileness…
The dream begins to fracture…

I am not finished here!
Not until I finish you…
You will pay for your crimes…
I reach out and cage it in my hand
I crush it in my fist
I squeeze it hard
With all my might
Years of bitterness and spite…
You will feel it all…
It crumbles and turns to ash and dust
Its powdered fragments hit the earth
Piece by piece
In swirls of bleeding colors
Echoing out into the scene
Like the fluttering of beating wings….

The children

Oh their faces…

Their horrid faces…

They all had turned to look at me
To stare at what I'd done
Some silent signal heard by none
But understood by all
Oh! They’re looking at me!
They’re bodies are still frozen in blissful motion
But their heads!
Oh their horrid heads!
They all have turned to gaze on me!
Even those who were facing the other way!
Their heads too, turned backward on their broken bodies
Severed from their shattered shoulders…
But still they look at me!
Every eye was fixed on me
Every gaze warped and contorted in a condemning scream
A silent horrified scream
That echoed in my ears and mind
Get out of my head!
This world isn’t real!
I’m trying to help you!
I had to break the silence!
I had to break the stillness!
You have to understand!
This isn’t real!
I have to set her free!
You have to listen to me!

STOP SCREAMING!

Their stony faces crack and crumble
Off twisted limbs and skeletal frames.
They laugh and cackle and cry and scream

~Naaaa na. Naa na na~

She’ll never get out

She’ll never leave.

Entombed in this wretched world forever…
I’m so sorry… I couldn’t be there…
I’m sorry I couldn’t have told you sooner…
I’m so sorry…

The glass cracks and falls around my bleeding fists
And whirrs past my flinching face
Like a thousand crystal wing beats….
The ghosts of butterflies…
Falling to the earth…
In pieces…
The picture shattered
The glass is gone
And there it lies…
The butterfly…
Free to fly away
Fade away
Forever
Free
But it won’t fly
It lies there pinned forever
Stabbed through the heart
Stilled in its youth
Steeled in its soul
A dream of color
For all the world to see
It will never rise on its own again
But…
In its doomed and premature sleep…
It will forever wait upon those hearts and minds
Who strive to touch a butterfly…


(Feel free to comment if you like :) This work has been copywrited. Any attempts to steal and/or reproduce this work without express permission and credit will be met with swift legal action and potential penalities. Thank you.)

Hello. This a poem I wrote for the story contest being held for this year's Halloween event on the forum.

Ebon

Fingertips brush broken walls
Footsteps echo in empty halls
The heralding call of one trembling soul
Lured onward by some unknown source
Of chiming tolls…
So faint and far away
More like memories of sounds than sounds themselves
The hammering heartbeats of a hundred battered bells
So soft and yet surrounding
Calling and calling
Blanketing her in the shadows of songs
Bleeding her thoughts in blushing cold
Waiting, walking, wondering
What this endless corridor of darkness might unfold
The bells droned
Nearly too terrified to move forward…
The bells groaned
But too tempted to turn back…
She froze
Standing on the edge of a dark threshold
Staring horrified into an endless expanse…
Somehow, steadily, the sound had grown
A chorus of candles burst into life
Climbing up the walls of this endless night
Allowing her eyes to take in the sight
The bells went quiet….
Cold cracked crypts of crumbling rock
Spiraled ‘round and ‘round the walls of stone
And leaning columns in looming rows
Shadowed o’er a foreboding throne
Sitting silent in the center
A living shadow of its own
Of ebon stones and braided bones….
Staring…
Waiting…
All alone…
Something was wrong…
A single light, soft and unsure
Blinked out from the dark throne’s core.
The silhouette of a little girl
Small and uncertain
Began to form.
She beckoned to the little spirit
Still standing in the ominous door
Leading out into the corridor…
This floating, fleeting, voiceless whisp
With fingers outstretched, and smiling face
Calls the little soul to play…
But what friendly ghost could dance in death?
What innocent and smiling thing could rejoice
In the surroundings of such suffering?
The little spirit hesitates…
Taking one step towards the throne
But in that instant, held herself back
And bolted from the room.
She was shortly pursued by a spine-searing scream
And the ruse began to fade
The crypts came crashing from the walls
The towers fell away
Tumbling down on that ebon throne
Of blackened blood and broken bone
The bells cried out and came raining down
Like a chorus of crumbling souls.
The little girl wept and wailed and sighed
To be sealed forever in her tomb
As the clanging bells spun shrouds of sound
In their lullaby of doom.
The little spirit had fled the sight
But still wanders those halls of cold
Cursed forever to walk the night
Her story never told…

Hi Bitter ~
We prefer that you only have one thread for your poetry in this forum, so I went ahead and merged your two threads into one.

Also, posting the same poem in multiple places is against the rules, so if I find "Ebon" elsewhere I'll be deleting it. Thank you for the advanced notice. :yes:

That's fine. I would prefer that you delete it from the poetry forum so that it can be preserved for the writing contest hosted for the Halloween event. Or I can. It's no big deal.

I wrote it and submitted it to the writing contest first, so please keep the poem intact on that thread and remove it from this secondary thread. I didn't know it was against the rules to post something twice in a case like this, and I apologize.

Oh, I thought you'd posted it elsewhere in Lit Spot, and not just in the writing contest thread. I'm okay with you getting critiques on it here, but I'm going to put it in quotes instead of deleting it. :D

Thank you very much! ^-^

Not a problem! :D