Introduction

I make it a regular practice to reach for my pen and notebook immediately upon waking. The words that spill out establish a bridge between two otherwise disparate states, facilitating a tenuous access to what Poe, in his Marginalia, calls "a class of fancies, of exquisite delicacy." The resulting syntactical constellation is sometimes obscure, sometimes striking; I try not to inflict a form, but to let it lead me with its own urgent inevitability. "The Human Butterfly" derives from such a piece of imaginative driftwood, washed ashore one morning, rediscovered months later amidst the tangle of other entries, filed down and titled.

The Human Butterfly

I am the human butterfly with wings of glass. I was a baby caterpillar once. Then I found myself crawling into bed beside a man and a woman. I slipped inside the woman and when the man couldn't fit, he yelled, "Marie, what you got in there!?"

"Why nothing, Henry dear," she whispered oh so romantically, fake eyelashes fluttering.

"Don't tell me, nothing? You got something hid in there and I wanna know what!"

So Marie, who does feel a bit funny--though delighted, nonetheless, to have me as a boarder in there, so to speak--pokes her finger in and she says, "My, Henry dear, you're right! There is something in there and it's alive!"

"Well what the hell is it?"

"l don't know, Henry, feels something like a caterpillar."

(It is important to note that Henry and Marie are quite young in fact, little over five and a half, but advanced for their tender years, as children are these days.)

Well Henry, who's getting mad thinking some other boy left his thing in there for Marie to play with, and doesn't believe a word about birds, bees or caterpillars, pokes around, sticks his finger in and pulls me out.

(Meanwhile I was sleeping soundly, dreaming such dreams!--of being born a human.

"So the cocoon isn't good enough for you, you lazy good for nothing," my mother scolds.

"But I don't feel like a caterpillar!"

"Just you wait. You'll see. They'll tell you what you are. They'll let you know you're nothing but a lousy caterpillar.")

And while I floated amidst human dreams of grandeur, Henry goes and pulls me out of Marie and he asks me what I am--though in my dream it's a caterpillar cop doing the asking, waving a twig club over my head.

"Why I'm a human caterpillar--what else?" And I look myself over to disprove my dreamed up lie, and there I am with funny hands and feet just like a man, only with the slinky snake body of a caterpillar.

"This must be our child!" Marie moans with delight, grabbing me and pressing me to her unripe breast. "Now let's play house, Henry. You're the Daddy and I'll be the Mommy and this here skinny little worm will be our baby."

Henry, who only wants to please, goes along with the game. "How's my honey?" he grins like a middle aged man just home from the office to his wife.

"I'm just fine!" Marie smiles. "Now kiss baby caterpillar. Baby loves Daddy!"

So Henry, despite obvious disgust, bends over to kiss me, but I, being so scared, and thinking for sure that Henry has every intention of swallowing me, dive right back in between Marie's legs.

And when I came out again I was a human butterfly for real. With wings of glass and a rush of desires that I could neither understand nor satisfy. And I flew out the window and into your fields. And when you see a butterfly, look twice! He may have a human face and a worried look just like your own.

SOURCE: Dreamworks: an Interdisciplinary Quarterly (v.5, no. 2. 1986/87, pp. 80-81)

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