The Death of Empathy and a Butterfly
Wings of raggedy cloth: sun-eaten and wind-beaten.
Stick legs crushed against gravel boulders,
earth quaking by boots of passers by.
Waiting for the end,
dreams of slumbering in springtime and
sweet tastes of nectar clinging to the air.
Merciful hand stretches down,
Valleys of finger—prints, forests of hair—
this god, sun-blocking and wind-shielding.
Can it bring the end?
Slowed, lowered wings wait for dark peace.
Cruel empathy leaves her battered and broken
in a cutting death-bed of bladed grass.
What a weak creature, she thinks,
crumpling into herself.
Further in, further down,
into her fate.
On a walk I found a butterfly with crushed wings and snapped legs. I knew it was going to die but I didn't have it in me to stop the suffering because it meant killing. I suppose it got me thinking about what empathy means to different creatures and what the butterfly might have thought of me and of life.
