The Fool and the Butterfly

I always fall in love with the kind of person who slips through my fingers like smoke. The ones who never carry keys, who don’t answer messages, who makes me believe their body is a poem and their soul is some wild animal, untamed and glowing. The people who live like their veins pulse with the beat of freedom - mental, physical, cosmic freedom. I meet them and suddenly my chest is no longer my own. One touch. One crooked smile. One kiss that tastes like danger and gum. I hope, no, I ache, to be the one. The one they stop for. The one that makes them pack away their suitcase heart. I want to be the reason they stay, feel at home, see me as their safe place in the chaos.

I hope that maybe, just maybe, they’ll throw their rules into the river for me, swear forever with breathless mouths, stay still. But it never works like that. It’s always the same stupid movie. I play the fool. They play the wind. What did we learn way too young? One of us is Ernie. The other? Bert. Always Bert. The one who stays behind to clean up the mess. Ernie and I watched 500 Days of Summer in a dusty, half-broken cinema that smelled like artificial popcorn and ghosts of teenage sex. Zooey Deschanel floated through the screen like cotton candy laced with cyanide. Joseph Gordon-Levitt blinked too slowly, like someone who still believes in mixtapes, warmth, and soulmates.

The film was beautiful in a dangerous way - about a butterfly and the fool who tried to pin it to a wall. About love that doesn’t love back. About how hope resurrects itself like some dumb zombie, only to get its head smashed again. Over and over. The songs tasted like cherry coke and breakups. The girl and I, barely touching, burning with that weird early-stage electricity. We laughed until tears ran down. We whispered insults at the screen, like children pretending not to care. Bitch, we said with reverence, heartbreak, and recognition. The film wasn’t a love story. It was a confession. A warning. A dare. Perfect for a first date. Perfect for ruining me just enough to want another one.