phoenix or butterfly

Intro: This is a very personal story, a story that is very personal to me, it is
metaphorically explaining the turmoil of the loss of my first love, and i hope you
enjoy it.

This is a story, for anyone who has ever been in love. It’s about a girl who found a
boy.

For anyone who has ever lain awake at night wondering what happened to their
paradise.

It’s a difficult thing to put into words, loss. You never truly understand why it was
gone, or even why it was there in the first place. The important thing to understand
is that we all have love in our lives, be it big or small, platonic or deep. There is
always love between any two people on this earth, even if that love in itself was
caused by something negative. No matter where you are, what scar’s you may bear,
or what you feel right now, just remember that all the paradise on this earth cannot
replace the one feeling between your first love and you.

And no matter how much you may grow, sometimes it’s just time to accept. The
people you take to that paradise with you are very few and far, and some only ever
take one in their entire lives. Paradise is a fragile thing to share with anyone who
has lied or hurt you. But the real heroes in these scenarios aren’t always those who
made the big step to leave that paradise. Believe it or not, paradise is a beautiful
state of perfection. And sometimes, the real heroes are those that stay there
forever. Not because it’s all they’ll ever have, but because its home. I found my soul
mate in that boy. But i do not feel that way anymore. And one day you will feel the
same.

I’m not asking you to learn from my mistakes, I’m not even asking you to accept the
reality of what it is. All I’m saying is that everyone has their own story. And whether
it is about a paradise, or about a place that isn’t so perfect there is a story for
everyone. And this is mine. So take what hurts and make your own assumptions on
what it is that this story is.

It’s not about closure. It’s not even about rekindling or reigniting something that is
gone. To be honest, you would only ever understand what it is if you’ve ever felt,
that all too common feeling of abandonment. For short, unrequited love.
Part one: Running from the rain

“Wake up, please, get up?

Two children’s silhouettes appeared vacant on the wilderness grounds below. One
lay with her hair splayed across her shoulders, on the floor, crouched; in an
indecisive state of D.O.A. silently her tears moistened the ground her overflowing
head imprinted upon. She clasped her eyes shut. The other was shaking in his own
state of agony inside his mindset. He wrapped his fingers around her waist. He
giddily shook her. Nothing.

“Please?”

The entire world around them tonight became a permanent freeze frame. The sky
was clear and beautifully outlined trees littered the view from the ground they had
stumbled onto. The kids had never wanted to be here. Birds had flown in an
insecure unison above the boy and girl. They now, wings spread in a flight fit for a
spitfire paused in the sky and expressed nothing but frozen thoughts of pure, basic
survival techniques, and there marble eyes glinted in reflection to the stars that
even paused in there vindictive shine. Their ignorance to the “whys” and “how” to
the people that end up here was proven to be correct, by the saboteur approach to
the attempts at salvation merely caused with their cynical over powering shine. The
only classed movement now was that of the circular see through objects of love,
wonder, innocence and naivety around the young girls silenced body; Bubbles.

These bubbles floated gently but steadily away from their vented creator. And it
seemed that they embodied so much more than just these simple ideas of
childhood in itself. Each bubble consisted of a frail dream. Each bubble had a
purpose. Each bubble was so pretty and showed a spectrum outline that only the
most imaginative and child full of dreams themselves could cherish and fully
anticipate such simple miracles appearing .baby rainbows. As the first few bubbles,
varying of many sizes, arose from her body, they captivated a certain pair of
shattered eyes. The boy stared up at them. Silently he made up brief stories of the
journeys of each of them had ahead. He looked as each bubble grew in maturity.
The boy now captivated, moved into a prayer kneel. He felt the dust around him
stick to the ground and he almost forgot. That only he and the bubbles were in
movement. The bubbles floated further into the blissfully unknown. Further into the
circled trees around them.

“Please?”

He lost his thought for a second and instead looked upon the girl that he had met
here. In this place, this forest of terminal drama.here.Bubbles now littering more
intensely then clouds on an overcast day, he wondered momentarily what if this
was his replacement for clouds, for anything remotely related to reality. he wanted
to divulge further into his thoughts but became captivated by one of the first
bubbles that had only been created moments ago. The childish concoction had
made a way past the ageing trunks and towered over the darkened branches of
irresolution and floated in a gesture of conclusion. Knowing now that it could float
forever in the fear of those razor sharp stars. The boy watched as the bubble
reflected distant shines of colours and shapes that momentarily sharpened and
projected words and pictures that became clearer than the face lying next to him he
had so carefully watched and analysed. The pictures shown carefully glided and
fixated on a spot close between the trees and the sky.

A happy family.

Just an ordinary family, in a cream coloured room sat around a table casually
laughing and deeply concentrating on that of parents’ reactions and offspring’s
admittance. They all laughed. Even her.
Such perfection, everything, all of it.
Stopped.
He gasped. The bubble burst upon one of the stars sharp edges. He had been so
indulgent in the perfection of the simplicity of the nonexistent memory, he had not
realised that not only did this fantasy become nothing .but an overemphasis of a
fantasy wasn’t even real. Not only that but he hadn’t realised it had floated so high
into the most dangerous of all places. But like the most exotic of poisons in the most
beautiful of flowers, not everything seems to rings as innocent as it seems.

The boy gathered such emotion into his eyes but refused to portray it. The dream
had just shattered and died right in front of him. It was like the bubble was
conceived in these dreams, led in a dream state and then battered the destroyed
within seconds of being born and exposed to this world. He then gasped at the
sudden outrage and recoil the spattered corpse was about to portray. The remains
floated gently in the air for not even a revelation opportunity and began to scurry,
then spatter then sprint in such fury towards the boy. The watered remains felt
regression as a type of spite perhaps, and set an armed attack at the boy, so it had
seemed.

The water hit him full on in the face, and had made him yelp, with a mixture of
confusion and despair.

“Look?”

He begged that such atrocities would not ruin such a beautiful innocence he had
watched before. It had all seemed to have fallen down in its honesty, in its vacancy
in its showing the true depth of the situation style. He knew that if those millions of
steadily created bubbles hope to make an attempt to salvage a euphoric start of
their artificial lives they would crumble, melt and find a closer way to hurt the
already destroyed that lay before. Known as there creator. It was to hurt him too.
The millions of bubbles began to travel to a one way destination where they would
be transformed and in turn burst and be exposed to ‘the truth’.

Like a concentration camped, those who were destroyed in there masses where only
mourned as a statistic. Indifference seemed to be the conclusive word of the
attitude towards the bubbles. None would survive. This was true. The inevitable end
to something that never really was anything.

He knew now.

Everything at that moment swerved back in motion.

The birds cawed. The tress whispered and whirred .they began to swerve at the
bubbles journey. The dirt upon the ground around rose and fell,
The stars shined there non apologetic shine. And just like that, the bubbles
exploded and burst open one by one.
Burst. Friendship. Happiness. Freedom. Mother. Father.
Millions of bubbles scattered the battlefield of stars.
Home, love, safety, protection, naivety and family.
Burst!
Hope, burst. Trust, burst. Salvation, burst. A chance, burst.
The girl broke her silence with this situation. It was not to end this way. She didn’t
need to believe in futile dreams, not anymore.
They were in love, and with that realisation she screamed:
“All because of you, I believe in angels. Not the kind with wings and not the kind
with halos, the ones that give you home when home becomes a strange place.”
And with that momentary lapse in the sky of decisive downpour, she arose to her
feet and grabbed his frantic hand.
The rain will kill them both if they don’t run.
Her own rainfall will kill them both.
They stood hand in hand as the artificial world fell around them.
And as the shattered dreams that were never to be, began to fall, they ran.
To paradise.
 Part two: To the fire

The two had day dreamed of this place for what seemed like an eternity. And here it
was. Indeed they where there. As they lay side by side, staring at one another, her
smile began to fade as her saviour took a match from his pocket.

The boy turned away from the girl, and indeed lit the end of the match and gently
massaged the tip against a tall stalk beside where he lay. The match then
indefinitely smut by the paradise breeze led the remnants of the matches fire to
carefully be circulated away to another place. Smoke couldn’t exist. This place was
perfect.

“Take my hand; I need to tell you something”

The girls smile returned. She was now home. With a person so perfect in a place so
precious. With a look of confusion she took his hand. And just as he began to speak,
the sky was alight with some kind of falling objects that could be seen as a meteor
shower, but when a second glance was strived for, it was seen as not to be meteors,
or even stars. He stared blankly.
He was a liar.
And just at that moment, flames fell from the sky. Paradise was lost forever , it lay
now falling asleep in reality, and insisted remaining in a sweat soaked ridden
nightmare, to sleep through dreams malicious realisation that fire is fire and rain is
rain but love cannot be love if its deceit reveals the unrequited kind.
Her heart exploded in tiny fragments’ that flew around this place, she gasped at the
pain.
“I’m sorry.”
The fire of betrayal drenched this paradise that was there’s .branches fell, the grass
around them burned. The crackle of this deception within these flames was
indescribable.
Before he could speak any further, the two were thrown into the air by the impact of
what could only be described as ‘their biggest fear’.
Now separated in this inferno of desperate day dreams, she couldn’t think.
All she knew was to protect the heart he gave her. His heart. Curled in a ball, she
clenched this heart. This pale smooth porcelain heart lay safely clenched in her
palm. Did he realise she would turn to ashes just to protect him? As the fire raged
on, she closed her eyes. In the end all she could curse was ‘running from my rain
made us run to your fire’. The truth had come; the traitor had made himself known.
Silence filled the place now.
Neither of us could stop the fire. Neither of us knew how to.

Part three: phoenix or butterfly

Both displaced across this desolate wasteland, he stood and said to her “you need
to walk way.” The girl refusing, he followed his seamless and perfectly projected
plan. Unknown to her, she was about to lose him forever. She silently handed his
heart back to him. Smiling weakly, she wanted to say something, anything for him
to see that she would forever be here now, because the tiniest fragments’ of her
shattered heart will always lay unfound in this place. He took his heart a hundred
percent whole and that was all he needed now. It had become apparent that this
action, this situation, was some kind of revenge, a returned favour of putting the
boy through the perilous journey at attempted salvation. He never wanted there. He
needed her. Just for the journey. Now he had reached his destination, he didn’t love
her anymore. And it was that simple. There was one problem. She wanted the
journey to be her ending, not a beginning to the rest of something without him.

There was enough said in the point of him walking in the direction away from her.
This had become nothing more than a bitter taste of ashes. There was nothing the
girl could do but watch the boy that she once knew turn away from her.This was
more than being short changed this was outright wrong. She was done with this
morphine induced thinking. Nothing can numb this reality of what he was living in.
He had decided, he had made his choice. She had not. Not until he jumped. He
walked to the edge of the place once called there and there alone couldn’t even
understand why he was doing this. She was beyond done with this fight with herself.
Is this wrong? Is this really good? There are so many easy ways to try and put in
perspective the words "why" but after that moment, that single moment, without a
single word to say to her that wasn’t laced in some kind of bitter resentment; he
was gone, towards the ocean below.

There was no chance to say why, he had cut his supposed losses with love, it didn’t
seem to matter that her heart was smashed all over this place, it wasn’t for her to
pick up anymore, and it certainly was not her occupational ideal to watch this thing,
this monster destroy everything she had worked so hard to achieve. But that was
not going through her mind anymore.
The rain had come and it had passed. The fire had come and it had passed. But
there was no ethical way that this would pass ever. He had jumped. The euphoria
that filled that one moment was impossible to conceive. With every broken branch
that lay around her, with every dried up piece of land, with every flint of ash that
burred in this awkward situation she couldn’t remember why they where even here
in the first place. She had done everything in her power say nothing.

In those few seconds those two people turned into something else. They were
beyond love. Beyond hate. It was time to escape. Everything in this place was
nothing now. But to her it seemed so beautiful, just because this place was there
still. Even if only in a few moments this place was going to be abandoned forever.
As the girl looked up, as the boys’ finger tips tapped the water, raindrops hit them
both. The girl gently closed her eyes, remembering all the words he told her, she
walked steadily to the edge, to see maybe an answer was waiting for her there. And
as she did, she fell gently onto her back and saw the most incredible phoenix rise
above her from the edge. The wings glistened from the rainfall, with its back to her,
its wings spread magnificantly, she knew.
"Him."
The fire around him burned defiantly to the rain.
And I can’t tell you what he was thinking, because I don’t know.
All I can tell you is that he flew as far away from her and that place as he could in
such a short time. I don’t think it caused him hurt, and I’m almost certain that the
place he went to after that was perfect to him.
She lay frozen as the rain spattered on her body. She lay there for days. For weeks.
For months.
Nothing mattered anymore.
This world had fallen around her beforehand this time it would be easier. It would be
easier because now she could keep her eyes shut.
Let the rain come, let the fire burn her, let him go.
Here she was, in this one moment. And this was all to familiar. Everything had
swerved to a halt. There was no breeze, no ripples on the water, and two birds
frozen in flight.
"No. it ends with him."
She was not about to let fate repeat itself.
With flashes of white:
Stars...
Tearing bubbles
Dirt midriff
Seagulls with beady marble eyes.
She kneeled.
"Was it...”
She stood.
"..Did he...”
Never. Not again. Nothing was right here anymore. The rain had always signalled
that this has been wrong.
And so she walked two footsteps to the edge and jumped.
She didn’t become a pheonix. She became a frail and tiny butterfly.

When you have lost love, the true form emerges from anything that is left of your
spirit. Be it magnificant, or loathing. Whatever it is, the object of surviving just
occurs for some for others, there left with an almighty fight, to whether the rainfall,
possibly the rainfall that appeared in love beforehand will win.

The girl didn’t know this.

The boy did.
The butterfly was torn to shreds and spat into the water.
The girl now in pieces.
The boy now a man.
The girl’s realisation;
"Phoenix or butterfly, this rule of love, he knew all along"
And so that was it.
She didn’t even try to take air.
She closed her eyes and ended this story in the only way she knew how.
The right way..

End