I thought she was dead already. Right when I stepped the stairs to the porch, she was there on the floor, with her shattered wings. I leaned and blowed towards her. Her wings moved but she was hanging on tight. She was hanging on for dear life. She was not dead. I left her well alone.
The second day, I found her at the left column, thought she was
not able to fly, and climbed up there.
The third day, she was still there. Asked her if she was not hungry… She did not say anything.
The fourth day I realized that she was laying her eggs there. And I learnt that sometimes butterflies eat nothing when they are butterflies, because they are so busy in reproduction, and they do not have much time for that.
The fifth day I saw that she moved to the tie beam, and so understood that she could fly for a short distance. I knew that she did not have much time left.
The sixth day I found her on the midst of the stairs, fallen on her back, her arms crossed, as if saying “I have done my job, and I’m done…” I took her dead body with the help of two paper sheets, and carried her to the tree across, left her under the tree.
The first day after her death, there was a bee on her body.
The second day, ants carried her pieces away.
The third day, there was almost nothing left of her… She was carried away for feeding other lives.
Days passed. I was checking the eggs each time I climbed the stairs, thinking they should have been left on a tree, that they would dry out there, and that all her effort with those broken wings were for nothing.
In the end, I concluded that I was right, because the eggs were broken.
Just then I saw that tiny tiny maggot moving slowly on one column, and another, not far from the broken eggs.
I wanted to go under the tree, tell her that they are born.
Yet I knew she was not there any more, she was carried away by bees, ants, and by those tiny tiny maggots…