Crush

He looked in her blue eyes, and saw a brand new butterfly just emerged from the cocoon. Its wings on the precipice: the potential to soar or to wilt by command of his slick palm.

“You might not like where this takes you” he said.

Her wings beat against the etched lines on his hand, spelling out “let me determine that for myself”.

With a sigh in time to her wing’s ticklish flutter he shut his eyes tight and extended his hand backward until he thought the bones would break. The butterfly soared and his hand drooped back into itself, fingers touching fingers touching the empty space where the butterfly’s wings once beat.

He looked up and caught a glimpse of bright orange and black against blue. He looked down.

It turns out it wasn’t she who needed warning. He felt the hand that held him tighten. He sensed the fingers closing in. Tense, and afraid, he heard the snap of a wing and realized it was his. He fought against the blackness, a fight he already thought he had succumbed to. But he had fallen again, and if he weren’t to be crushed by her freedom he would be crushed by his own paralysis.