18 Jun Between Night and Morning
Around 3 a.m., I woke to the sound of something moving in the dark.
A soft bump. Then another. A faint, papery thump against the wall.
I lay very still, listening. Whatever it was, it had wings. I could hear them. I pulled the comforter up over my head and decided I would sleep like this.
But then it stopped.
And that felt worse.
I fumbled for my phone, turned on the flashlight, and moved it slowly across the room, trying to catch sight of the intruder. The beam landed on the wall and there it was. A large, uneven shadow, flickering as it moved. Some kind of winged insect. It looked menacing. It was close enough to land on me, bite me, and hang on. I shivered.
I did not like it.
There was a thin strip of light coming from the bathroom door, just enough to break the dark. I had an idea. I opened the door a few inches and waved my hand toward it. It darted for the light. I shut the door quickly behind it.
Contained.
I went back to bed, feeling only slightly better.
In the morning, the room was quiet and full of light. I opened the bathroom door slowly.
There it was on the floor. Still. Small.
Not a threat. A butterfly.
I felt a quick wave of guilt. Just a few hours earlier it had seemed so large, so scary, so capable of something I needed to guard against. Now it looked soft. Almost delicate. I knelt down and held out my hand. It climbed on, its tiny legs tentative, pausing as if deciding whether to trust me.
I carried it outside in cupped hands and set it on a bright orange flower. It rested there for a moment, then lifted gently into the air and was gone.
My 3 a.m. self is not to be trusted. She makes small things feel large and fills in details that aren’t there, then believes them completely. She is certain in the way only fear can be, turning quiet worries into something louder, sharper, and more absolute than they really are.
And it isn’t just the dark. There are other versions of me, tired, stretched thin, emotionally depleted, that do the same thing. They tell convincing stories about falling short, about what might go wrong, about what I should have done differently.
And in the morning, in the light, it was something else entirely.
Nothing about the butterfly had changed.
Only the way I could see it.