ORANGE BUTTERFLY
orange butterfly -
flight of fanciful thoughts spin
the stuff of dreams
"Ah I see you have cut off your dread locks. You look very handsome. I was just about to get dressed for church. Would you like to go to church with me. We can carry the gran with us. I will have to get her ready though.
I have never seen you with your hair cut this low. Do you remember when we first met? Your hair was styled in a blown out Afro. You looked handsome then too. But I like this older more somber, matured look.
After being apart for so long and living with this longing to see you, it was so shocking to see you in grey dreadlocks. I had seen photos you sent to your mother when the dreadlocks were still young-looking.
One of your friends had met me on Frederick Street one day. She told me she had seen you in Brooklyn and she was shocked at how old you looked. She said,she had stopped to talk to you and when she was finished talking to you and walked away. Her little grandson of five asked her. Granny is that your grandfather. I smiled at that story. Still not in my wildest imaginings ever thinking I would see you looking this way.
I couldn't grieve at Uncle Lincoln's funeral. Not because I wasn't sad at his passing. No, not so at all. I couldn't grieve because I was so happy to lay eyes on you again. Isn't life strange? A happy family - was that too much of me to ask of life?
Maybe this was your uncle's way of saying to me I know how much you love your husband. Be happy. Don't be sad."
The light of morning is my gift on returning from dreamscape; where colours are real, only more intense and longing is etched, only deeper.
