BUTTERFLY OF FREEDOM

It was going on winter when she realized, I can’t wait to see him. This shouldn’t be, I am newly married. Why do I feel this way about you?

His long limbs and torso were different from her husbands. His were instruments for expression, a man learning to dance. A man who had already lived a lifetime learning to survive, other loves, other heartbreaks. A man who thought deeply, decidedly different than she. A gift she was given to explore. A man who colored her being in shades of pink and green she did not recognize. A man who led her to a death.

They were graduate students. Dancing was to be their career. Teaching was their savior. He was a jazz dancer; she was a ballerina to the core. Opposites attract they say. He was intrigued.

She felt a magical trembling akin to excitement coupled with dread, like salty french-fries dripping in grease that water your mouth while simultaneously turning your stomach; she ate them anyway. His essence wreaked of difference; the spicy scent of cumin, an odor foreign to her yet provocative. A snorty laugh that made her smile, sweetly beckoned her closer while she hide her glee. His longness invited her tiny body in toward his warmth, and oceanic understanding. He was a captivating stranger with layers she burned to uncover.

Their professor described his ideas as “fresh.” She wanted to hate his ideas as they both vied for a teaching assistantship which could pay the bills. Conversely, like flies clinging to the sweetness of a ripe peach with pungent scents, these ideas begged her lips to bite toward their seeds of strength, potential growth, big, and full of promise. She believed she knew how to protect her teeth.

***

She found herself standing near him in the dance studio, tiny in his towering teacher shadow, but with the posture of a queen. They gazed into an understanding only they had privy to. She transformed into a Jack-in-the-Box, small inside the box, grander than the glaring sun outside its confines. Tiny dancer percussively popping up with bouquets of new philosophies, vivid landscapes, emerging ideas, new ways of moving, feeling. All floating around her, dandelion pods in the wind on a sultry summer day, spreading seeds of life. She muses, remembering the sensation of his musical movement that titillated her in startling ways, the rhythm of those spreading seeds. Syncopated shoulders declaring joy in moving against the beat, integrating circling hips sensually painting infinity to a polyrhythmic beat as he traveled with breathtaking speed. Arms and lengths of legs she longed to be between. His chariot carried her on an enlightening journey, captivating her. She rode right into a love of depth, and deceit.

***

The first time they ate each other alive guilt wrapped its blanket of suffocation around her. A single tear slipped out confirming what she knew had been a profoundly exquisite connection, spiced with dishonor. She wanted him enough to risk everything. They took each other deep inside, in her office, a refurbished convent that once housed nuns, now housing her violations. Years later he confessed, “With that tear, I knew you loved your husband; I felt your guilt. I questioned my own ethics too.” It did not stop them, she wanted more, they wanted more.

Times after, she found herself engulfed in the cave that was his room. It became a cocoon for their love. Dank, rich, dark, and fertile earth scents filled her head as incense not unlike him, reminiscent of the warmth of sands soaked in the rays of the sun for eternity.

Lengths of arms and legs fitting snuggly as spoons in their compartment, hidden from view until the drawer is opened. The candlelight, rich with a luminescent spirit carried her into a lofty temple of love she’d never known, into a dance she had not envisioned. They were floating in the passion of forbidden love, cravings for a lifetime of these moments.

She was growing, in which direction?

***

The mirror does not lie. Each time she looked on herself, only black and dark blue came through, deep bruises of dishonesty surfacing, begging for attention.

She ran back as fast as she could hoping not to hurt the many in this path of her destruction. Lying where she’d been, showers to clean the scent, heart tightly closed to the magic she’d felt. She was buried in regret for hurting, yet not for experiencing. Her innocence was gone, her marriage damaged. Her lover desolate with lack of words, bleeding in his heart he later revealed. She hurt all of them, including herself. Yet, she did not regret the union she had cultivated with her lover. He revealed a soul space within her, begging for growth.

A selfish place she feared.

A place she had been denying for the sake of pleasing others. He cracked her wide open.

The Tower card in Tarot asks, “What grows from the ruble of a fallen tower, what needed letting go?”

Many years later, finding herself alone, the answer revealed itself. A soul yearning had pecked at her from a young age. Become the free spirit you truly are and exercise your wings. Throughout her life they told her she was small, delicate, and weak. You can’t do that.

They bargained with her, offering safety and security.

She wanted to dress in red, paint her nails bright fuchsia, leap, twirl, and release in diaphanous, artistically ornamented hippie clothes, and cut her hair like Twiggy. She wanted to be a ballerina. Until she met Him, these dreams seemed illusions with little hope of manifesting. “Out of reach” they told her, “It’s too difficult a life. Nice girls don’t behave that way. Queen of weirdness.”

He led her down the garden path of authenticity.

Regret still permeates her soul for the cavernous, tumbling towers she created. The dust from the ruble became embedded in her as shame for having hurt them. A lifetime of watering through their forgiveness has washed most of it away, replaced by gratefulness for having known men of honor, capable of forgiveness.

Now, traveling on her journey, like a butterfly, she merely lights upon the souls within her garden, never to settle in, on, or under. Strong winds can paralyze a butterfly, as can fear of being captured for one’s splendor. Instead, she flits, flirts, and travels on the path alone. Other men, less noble, have come and gone, none could capture her for long. None worthy of her love as those she betrayed. She knows these souls here written of were not meant to be for a lifetime. Yet, without having known both she would not have transformed into a lone butterfly of freedom, spreading love but only briefly drinking of the nectar.

Professor Emerita Sandra M. Perez, Towson University Department of Dance began studying creative writing after retiring from a lifelong career as a professional dancer, and arts educator. Her stories Wilderness, Light, and Meditations on Our True Love Story were published in the international literary magazine “Adelaide.” She lives in Maryland among nature with her cat Lulu where she continues to pursue her lifelong passion of sharing the joys of writing, dance, and reading through movement, words, and storytelling.