The Memory of Butterflies

by Grace Greene

But you fit in as you can where you find yourself,

knew that sometimes the most significant changes were natural, but often they were painful or forced. There was no irony or mercy in nature but rather unsentimental, practical reality.

Those lies hung like chains. Chains of love or of deceit? Chains were chains. Eventually, they would grow heavy and difficult to keep hidden, regardless of why one first chose to wear them.

No action is without consequence, especially unintended consequences.

You have the memories. They are in you, and that’s the safest place for them.”

I was afraid I’d be wakeful that night. The ghosts and regrets from my past were bound to climb into bed with me, but no, I dropped off to sleep as if I hadn’t a worry in the world.

my father’s ashes had been poured into Cub Creek, destined to vanish. He was lost to the past, too. Erased? Not quite erased, but the aspect of him was changed. Gran had changed the truth of who he was into the memory of someone he’d never been.

What you sow . . . I had sown these seeds. These lies. I’d kept them watered and fertilized and pruned because I wanted to avoid an ugly, distorted reaping.

The geography hadn’t changed, as if the laws of time and nature had stayed their course, despite how greatly our lives had changed since I’d last taken this walk.

We reaped our fate by what we sowed. I had an idea that fate was predestined but that a thin line divided fate and destiny. Destiny was the result—hopefully the gift, sometimes the curse—that we might yet reap due to actions, or the lack thereof, that altered fate.

Some things were simply what they were. Some gifts must simply be accepted. With luck, or a favorable destiny, the payment could be avoided. If, in the end, fate ruled and the payment must be made, then the balance would be whether the happy interlude was worth the punishment. From my perspective, it was.

the old lurch in my chest was so faint I could see the time coming when I wouldn’t feel it at all but experience it only as a memory arising occasionally.

Sometimes our choices influenced our destiny. Sometimes fate stepped in and made those choices moot.

my experience has been that people cling too hard to the past, or they ignore it, or they try to obliterate it for their own reasons.

So many lies. It had felt right at the time. The thing to do. The best choice. But more and more, I was feeling their weight.

Life will. That was something smart people said. Life will out. Life will find a way. I thought that meant life goes on and that whatever that basic, primal driver of life was, it won. Every time. It would push through and remind you, often with cruel strokes, that any pretense of human control was an illusion.