Butterfly barrettes
Purple plastic laced with sparkles
Clipped in her long brown hair
Made the butterflies flutter
With every turn of her head
We played together
In the schoolyard
As little girls will do
Running back and forth
Across the lawn
Seems like I was always
Chasing after her
Until one day she finally went
Where I could not go
A red blinking light
On the answering machine
Nothing scarier than
A message left late at night
I never made it to the funeral
Mamma said there were some things
Little girls should not see
Of course I knew about death
But how could it come
To take my friend
A girl so innocent and young
With butterfly barrettes in her hair
They put a butterfly on her grave
A permanent doodle
On the smooth pink granite
A fitting marker
For what she had lived and lost
Fly away little butterfly
Be free and make peace
With your heart and your soul
And everything else death stole
She gave me one once
So many years ago
A butterfly barrette
Purple and plastic and sparkly
Sometimes I take it out
And clip it in my own brown hair
And remember her
The caterpillar who never got the chance
To escape from her cocoon
In memory of Beth
ČTEŠ
A Tree Takes Root
Poeziea tree takes root out of the seeds that were sown as deep in the forest a new life is grown
