I wish we hadn't lived so long as butterfly wings. I wish we hadn't been quite so colorful, quite so light—too light to fly, really, and so we blew, end-over-end, in spirals on the updraft. That's where it went wrong, where we singed ourselves in the too-intense sun, where gasping in the too-pure air we suffocated. I know people who would kill for two wings, whole and beautiful, perfect and bright and outstretched against the barriers of gravity, treetops, clouds. But we were two wings without a person, and a butterfly without a body is merely a pair of wings picked off by a sadistic child. So, left to dry and wither together on a suburban back porch, the summer breeze took us. Some child, in his terrible innocent malice, tore us apart and cried, "There! You're free! Are you satisfied?" But it wasn't freedom that he gave us. It was slow death without control. What good is lightness when the wind chooses our every move? What good is purity when we've lost a voice to sing and legs to dance with? It is a sick and leering world that let me find my other wing, only to hurl us into the killing sunlight. We lived too long as butterfly wings, you and I. Color and lightness tore us apart. They always do.