Listen. It happened. I remember it.
I'm trying to convince us both. It hardly seems real anymore, but I couldn't have made it up. I can still feel the wings fanning my skin.
I was too young for a job, or between jobs, maybe. Or was it during the school year? I was in high school at the time. Maybe I was going out there after school, out to the backyard in late afternoon early evening, always around the same time, to stand at the corner of the house. I would be between the raspberry bushes and the air conditioner, just under a pattern on the bricks of the house that made me think of a sword. I'd stand and wait.
The butterfly would be there already, resting near the sword on the house or flying round the corner of the balcony.
He was a Red Admiral. His marking was like the inverse of a monarch, mostly black with spots of gold and white at the wing tips. Monarchs haunted the dark hallway between the houses where the live-forevers grew. They were skittish, vaulting from the pink star-shaped flowers at anyone's approach. Red Admirals seemed friendly by comparison, tame and companionable.
The first time--it must have been an accident. Did I startle him into flight, did he circle back as if curious? Was he testing me, could I be trusted?
I presented myself as another object in the landscape, a pillar on the lawn he'd never seen before. The butterfly went round and round, closer each time, touched my shoulder, flew off.
I knew the secret. I just had to stand still.
Day after day, I went back. My reward for patience would be to serve as a perch for some moments or minutes and to be slowly fanned by black and gold wings. I would hold my arm out, palm up, a statue-allegory on the act of offering. He rarely settled where I wanted him to.
A tiny touch, then gone. He would sense a bird shadow and take off in pursuit. He careened after whatever flew by. I finally understood what he was looking for when he chased the shadow that happened to be made by another butterfly. He flew up, they danced together, a sparrow shot past. This threw a shadow he could not resist, so he abandoned the dance to chase an impossible dream. The other butterfly dropped down to mope on me. I tried to be there for her even if I didn't know what to say. Eventually she flew away too.
I would wait, afternoon after afternoon, for either of them to return. Sometimes they would; mostly they wouldn't.
This is what I did for I don't know how long--until other things caught my interest, I suppose. But in a way I am out there even now, just barely feeling the weight as he touches my arm, just barely feeling the air move when the wings fan. Standing still, hoping the touch will come, powerless to grab tight, clutch or keep.