Butterfly 5

by Ashley Antoinette

God had a way of shrinking powerful men and reminding them they were merely human masquerading a faux authority that was never enough when it counted.

The student had become the teacher. If Ethic wasn’t so consumed, he would have been proud. Messiah was smart, he always had been. He was a born leader that Ethic had groomed. The only thing stopping Messiah from ruling the world was himself. His fear of self.

“Can’t strategize against God.

Ethic and Messiah were children of the dark, but miracles came from up top.

Messiah had never had the structure Morgan had come up in. The hierarchy, the safety, the respect, and protection of someone that would never hurt you. All he knew was survival. He viewed the world differently than Morgan. It was their greatest challenge in seeing eye to eye. She loved him with everything she had, and he had loved her with nothing at all. Her abundance of experience with love was zeroed out by his lack of it.

Messiah didn’t grasp that inconsistent love was worse than no love at all.

A man wasn’t supposed to love a woman the way he loved his. Every word of God he’d ever read or that Nyair attempted to teach him said so. The whole false idols and such, but damn it if Alani Lenika Okafor wasn’t his Heaven and Earth, even sometimes his Hell.

Shit could be so easy if the male species would simply live in the realm of black and white. Niggas loved to exist in gray zones where right could be wrong and wrong could be justified. It was all good until a bitch tried to tip-toe in the gray zone too.

She played in his thoughts like the melody of this song. He remembered every single moment they had spent. Every argument. Every reconciliation. Every bend of her brow when she was displeased and every smile, she had ever blessed him with. The man could find his way to her in the dark just from her scent.

I think the trauma bond was between you and your father. I think you felt an allegiance you can’t explain to a man that hurt you unspeakably bad. And I think because of that blind loyalty you expect Morgan to show you the same. You want her to be loyal to the pain you caused. I think you minimize the magnitude of the consequence of your actions. Your abandonment traumatizes her.”

“And leveraging your presence without an explanation of why you were leaving was emotional abuse, Messiah. You don’t have to physically injure to leave a scar.”

“Before any of us can point fingers at how someone else mishandled a situation, we have to see how we contributed to things,” Khadeen said. “That’s accountability.”

“Loving someone means being honest with them, Messiah. You have to tell her everything you don’t want her to know about you and trust that she loves you enough to still choose you. All a woman really wants is the right to make her own choice. Its called respect.”

That was the thing with addiction. It didn’t favor. It transformed. When you cut it off in one form it manifested in another.

“I think what you have with Bleu is very hard to find. That type of friendship is rare. I think you see her in a limited capacity, Messiah. If she was a plant, she’d be dying because you aren’t feeding her enough light and water. I’d like to meet Morgan. I’d like to see the flower that’s distracting you from the plant.”

Separation is necessary for growth,

Name is a currency when you’re powerful enough.”

you let enough bad shit weigh you down, and you’ll never fly again.

“Sometimes you forgive just to keep the people you love in your life,”

Things for you have been black and white. I kept your life that way on purpose, so you don’t know much about doing the wrong things for reasons that feel like life or death.

And all fear ain’t external, sometime a man can’t get past the ghosts in his head.

Grief left no room for any other emotion.

Love gone come and love gone leave.

Love is a trick, but baby you got to trick bigger.

You require loyalty. What is a man gone do when another skirt enters his space? You require stability. What can he bring to the table to make your life easier? To make your kids’ lives easier? You require honesty. Will he lie to you? Cheat on you? Is he deceitful? Or does he warp reality to fit his narrative? You require dependability. Will a man be there? Will he put other things or people before you? You require opportunity. How can a man elevate you? What he bringing to the table that you don’t have access to? You require transparency. Is a man open to share the hard things? You demand history. Run a man’s past down. What is his trauma? His triggers? Because the things men don’t speak on are the things that make them mistreat you.

Stop chasing love, Morgan. Queens don’t chase, we sit, and we wait for the greatest man to prove his worth. That man will bring everything I just listed to you on a silver platter with no confusion involved.”

“Sometimes the power is in the legacy, not the king,”

“Love is felt not seen,

“You weigh what you have, not what you’ve lost,”

“So, I got to fall in love with another boy to get over the first boy? Then what if that boy breaks my heart? Then what do I do?” Bella asked. ​Bella could see the question land with Morgan. It collided with her, revealing hurt inside Morgan that Bella knew she tried to hide. ​“Do your best to love yourself,” Morgan said. “Until you meet somebody you can trust yourself with.”

“You fell in love.” Ahmeek kissed her and on the route to her lips he repeated, “Morgan Atkins if a nigga ever tell you different he lying.”

“It was always gone be us, love,”

“All roads lead back to you. No matter what happens, no matter who is against it, no matter where life takes us. I want to love you for the rest of my life, Ahmeek.”

“You want to change, but you keep going back to places that require you to remain the same. Sometimes you just got to let it all go, Messiah.”

“What’s ahead of you could be more valuable than what’s behind you. You’ll never get there if you don’t trust the process of loss.