Butterfly
I was born. The doctor handed me to my mother and said good luck. I was crying. My father came in the room with a handlebar mustache, and my mother said good luck to him. Out the windows, specks of dead stars were falling, landing in the ocean, hissing. Grandma and grandpa came and said hello, good luck. The other grandma and grandpa came by and said there was no such thing as luck, don’t be superstitious. Shortly thereafter, they died.
I eased off my crying. I was in an orange and brown apartment. There was a songbird singing in a cage, and a big German Shepherd named Cybil, sniffing me. I was just a baby and already I saw that my mom and dad locked up things that sang, and kept a hungry beast to keep the peace and protect the house. I really stopped my crying then. They didn’t have to feed me to their beast. I was a big hit.
I was quiet. I had my first revery. My first daydream. I crawled across a field of wildflowers, and then through the dark forest, on the other side of which I saw a white farmhouse. I crawled up the stairs and through the door and inside I found a white room with nothing in it yet, because I had no memories to put there. I went home.
I opened my eyes and could see color. I noticed a butterfly in the yard. I said, Hey butterfly. The butterfly said, Hey baby, good luck. My mother sang to me, bounced me on her knee, was kind; my father told me jokes, impersonated Mickey Mouse, acted like an airplane, flew me around the orange room. They were both so gentle.
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