Of Wings & Dreams

I remember collecting butterflies in mayonnaise jars with whole punched covers;
permitting air, but no escape...
Holding so tightlty to fragile containers with even more fragile contents:
whispers of rainbow on wings that gently kissed air and petals...
Staring for hours at at time; dreaming of flight, the possibility of fairies as friends, and princesses and armor-clad knights.
Learning that release was so much more liberating than capture,
and so,
we spent hours hovering over flowers, anticipating nature's reaction to life;
believing that daintily picked flowers (an offering for the sacrifice of freedom) would prolong the breath they took...
and, when that didn't work, we shook containers free of the burden of death and collected caterpillars and leaves instead...
in the end, understanding that some things are meant to be free,
begrudgingly removing hole-punched covers for imminent release...
And then we learnt how to capture hearts,
and although the same principle remains, there were rule breakers who crammed still-beating hearts with stilled ones;
lacing kill jars with the ethyl acetates of life,
quenching passions
and, they, stunned by the reality of glassine envelopes and it's resistance -
or further persistence of mountings for the world to see...
Display cases lined the walls of the proud while some walked with torn sleeves and empty chest cavities,
no longer flying or enveloped in the color of dreams;
imprisoned by humbled declarations of love,
lured by by the nectar of a brokenness  that they could not understand until they were on the inside, looking out:
A conquest dated with details and then put away until boredom-dusted albums are recalled...springs and summers of lives then suffocated in jars
that were more valuable than life.