2025-08-19
"...life at any given moment cannot really ever be fully understood..."
I was on my way to run an errand.
An annoying and slow bureaucratic process in a police department in the middle of nowhere.
To get there, I took the subway and sat down with a book.
After only a few pages of reading, at the first stop of many to come, I got distracted from my book.
The doors opened and a yellow-winged butterfly flew in. It fluttered around a bit and then stood next to my feet.
The entire ride I became anxious and distracted, thinking someone would step on it.
I closed my book in resignation.
At each stop people were getting on and off. Most didn’t even notice it.
Somehow, it remained there. Alive and unbothered.
By some miracle, it had not been stomped.
I wondered how the butterfly had gotten down here in the first place. This particular subway line was deep underground.
I wanted to help it get off, but what the hell could I do (shooing it out through the doors would make me look ridiculous).
By now, the train had travelled through at least a dozen stations in between.
Eventually, as we reached the outskirts of the city, light seeped in through the windows and the subway rose from underground to overground.
At that exact stop, the doors opened once more.
I felt a breeze of fresh air.
And the butterfly flew out.