Butterfly- Prisoner

I’ve been in here for seven years, three months, and twelve days, but who’s counting? What did I do? Does it matter? The point is, I did it. And now I’m stuck in here. It’s all cinderblock and rusted metal, and maybe some brick thrown in here and there. This isn’t one of those places you see in the movies, the kind where you can’t drop the soap. It’s a nice place, a classy place, you could say. Not the swanky type with conjugal visits and fluffy bathrobes, but a generally pretty solid prison. There’s a library and a TV and edible food. But even those get old quick. What I miss more than anything, I gotta say, is the great outdoors.
Not that we don’t get to go outside ever, we do. We play basketball or work out all the time. But that’s cement and concrete and chain-linked fences. I miss open fields with flowers and forests with endless trees. I miss babbling brooks and rolling hills. But what I miss most of all is butterflies. We got a lot of time to think in here, and lemme tell you, butterflies occupy a lot of my mind a lot of the time.
There’s just so much that is so beautiful about them. First, you got the obvious: their pretty colors. They are good looking bugs, there’s no denying that. But there’s more to it than just that. There’s their transformation, their, whatchamacallit, metamorphosis. I read about it some in the library here. They go from those crawly little caterpillars, all wiggly and silly, into a cocoon. They just roll themselves up into a little ball and stay there until they come out a totally different thing. Not just any thing, but a magnificent butterfly. Lemme tell you, I’d like to roll myself up and come out something different, something more beautiful. But nope I’m a human, a man. Then there’s that last thing, that special something that butterflies have. It’s not just their colors that catch our jaded human eyes. It’s something else, something you can’t put a name on. It’s a sort of feeling, a spirit, a freedom. They are reborn into a new life and all of a sudden, they can fly. A whole new world is open to them. But it’s not like when new world open for us humans. When we get new things, we conquer, destroy, and move on. With a butterfly, you just get the feeling that they are living their life and enjoying it. They drink their pollen and float up around pretty flowers, being admired. It’s a pretty great life, if you ask me.