the butterfly garden.
It's his last chance and he fumbles with the flowers, tripping over his breath and the roses in his hands. He has to ask her, he has to, because he's a little bit brave and he absolutely has to know if this could be something. Something worth the sweat and pain and waiting. Something for them.
So he asks her, in sort of an ambush, really. She's taken aback, face flushed in that lovely lovely way. He wants to sink down but he doesn't, he just tries to act natural, like this is not a big step for them. Her eyes soften as she watches him, and he wonders what it means, what these shades of green and orange in her eyes of deep brown mean. Then her lips move to match her eyes and she says the best word he's ever heard.
"Yes."
He takes her to the butterfly garden, because he can't think of beauty without seeing her. She smiles when she sees, and she gasps and she sighs. He looks at her and he knows that happiness is tangible. Her eyes are the sky, and he's flying with her. The butterfly wings take the place of the flowers in the shot of their life.
They could become almost everything, and he tells her that. "Why not?" she shrugs, and so they do.
It's not a sudden everything. First there's telling people, then there's seeing each other, learning to hold each other, learning to love each other. Keeping each other through distance and chilly phone calls across land and across sea. Kisses, sometimes, always brief and never quite resolved. He likes that, doesn't want resolution, because resolution is finality and that is something he's never met.
To him, there's no end to the show. He takes it with him everywhere, is in a dozen projects before he knows that he misses it, really. Then concludes that he doesn't. It's his life, it's in his blood, in every single frame of him there is a hint of it. Leaving it behind would be leaving her behind, and he's never been strong (or weak) enough for that. Never enough. Never in never.
She flutters from place to place, from passion to passion, but love never takes hold except with him. "I can't see anybody else but you," she tells him. He knows it's true, can see it when she takes a breath or forgets. She's not too good at permanence but for him, she gives what she can.
Eventually he sees the sunset and the wind across the trees, knows it's time, the pacing's right. So he sits down with her, goes further down on a single knee. Composition of autumn and the shadows on her face. He could never regret asking. She says it, again, that word, and he hears his heart beating in between the music that isn't there, but could be. They could be even more.
They dance at the wedding, then he takes her away, first off to the most important place. Before Paris or Rome, there's the quiet butterfly garden right there in Seattle, waiting for them as it always has been. It's all new again, they're new, and the way the light catches her eye when she laughs or she smiles is just perfect. Silently, he captures this moment.
It's broken by a cry in the night some sixteen months later. "It's gone," she sobs and she sobs, and no matter how long he waits, the conflict finds no end on its own. He tries to giver her back her heart, but he can't. They speak a different language now. She speaks in black and white, and he can't fill her with the color. They've lost their star.
He comes home one day to find the lens is cracked. He isn't one to yell, so he just whispers instead, again and again. Why, why, why. "That one was for the baby," is her only reply. "Why keep it?"
Throwing it away isn't possible, isn't right for him, so he tucks it away in a box and prays every night she won't find it. She's his only love, but he is himself and has to feel what he feels and see what he sees and it's the only way he can find that. Every week from then on is a single take, the same thing continuing, no change, no distance. He feels every moment and hates himself for it.
Finally, he begins to see her again, all around and in-between. It's a sunrise in the evening when she looks at him and says, "Matthew." He asks her why, though he knows it in the back of his heart. "It means 'gift of God'. A miracle."
That becomes his reference for the months and months that follow. When anything aligns, he thinks, "Matthew", and he's right. Two weeks before, they visit the butterfly garden, and she points at a green lover with gems for wings. "That's the new one." He asks her where the old one is. "There," without thinking. Bright blue, in the corner of the shot. He's expected this, treasures it.
The name holds firm. He enters a transition phase, another springtime, so he hopes. She blooms. Thinks about returning to his motif, sighs. Would be meaningless here.
Some nameless day, the gift is gone. "His grandmother," she says. "I'm fading."
The leaves change. He takes her when she whispers, longing-wishing-losing for more meaningless time. She finds a white one and it lands on her finger. "I expect that one's me." He wants to smell the film, to prove reality, but he knows she'd lose her last smile.
He kisses her in an overexposed room of nameless horrors, tastes the resolution, hears the music. For a long time, less than forever, he waits for his own end credits. Many things pass before he sees.
A year and he takes the small one (the name is painful). They find a blue butterfly and he kisses it. Kisses it farewell into the welcoming blackness of finity.
End Notes: There are many layers to this story, and I hope they are evident in the execution. I would like to draw your attention to just one. You probably noticed the use of many film and photography metaphors. I think that his camera work is a very important part of him, so I decided to expand upon that and peek into how he might view the world.