Jumping Hearts

It started with a butterfly.

Michael wasn't one to believe in anything he couldn't see. When he was twelve, and his mother told him it was okay because even though his father had passed, he would stay with them in their hearts. It was okay because one day, they would all meet each other again in heaven. She was so very sure of it, told him how God would welcome them with love and warmth.

That day, Michael had fractured something between them, when he told his mother that his father was just a corpse buried six feet under, was just some skeleton wrapped in flesh that was burned and charred and too ugly for an open casket. He knows something fractured because the slap that took a second too long to register (that rang, rang, rang through his ears) was enough to divide the earth between them. Maybe he believed in that, because though he couldn't see it, he felt it every time they were in the same room together.

Now, seven years later, he was still firm in his beliefs.

He sat on the edge of stained marble, blowing cherry-flavored smoke from a cheap disposable vape he had bought at a tobacconist down the road. It wasn't good, but it was better than the cigarettes he still ached for. But he had promised he would quit, promised it wouldn't be the death of him. Deep down, he hadn't cared if it had.

He licked his dry, cracked lips.

It was too sunny a day for his mother to be buried; he stared at her freshly dug grave, throat burning and eyes dull as he took in the sing-song of birds that nested in the tall oaks that surrounded the small graveyard.

She didn't deserve sunshine, and blue skies, and pretty birds who sang sweet lullabies to the dead. What she deserved is the rain, and the clouds, and the mud that had caked the scuffed shoes of his twelve-year-old feet, so long ago when he stood beside his mother as they buried the father Michael never got to know.

He pulled more harsh smoke into his lungs, closed his eyes to hold back the tears that threatened to fall, felt the warm light on his skin. It was a beautiful day, if only he could enjoy it.

'Morals are for men, animals live in the mud.'

He slowly opened his eyes, the moment passed, blowing out the air his lungs hated, breathing in the breath he almost could taste the air of corpses on. He was the only one that came to watch her cheap casket find its new home among the worms and dirt. He was the only one that came to place ten-dollar daises upon the freshly turned soil of her grave. The desolated silence, the lack of crying and moans and prayers, almost made him feel inclined to say one for her himself.

But he had never believed in a presence that he couldn't hold between the palms of his hands, he never believed in something so cheap as an all-seeing being. He wouldn't disrespect his mother by lying in her stead.

The butterfly was in greyscale.

'What...'

He choked on the smoke that he had sucked in, eyes trained on the small butterfly fluttering not three feet away from his mother and father's graves, almost seeming to shine in the sun like fractured stained glass.

'Will you meet me? Where we used to play?'

It was beautiful,

but in the way a broken body was beautiful. In the way a vacant service station parking lot was beautiful. In the way neon lights, flickering and baked in five-day-old blood, was beautiful.

'Wait-' He slipped and fell, vape forgotten amongst the swaying grass, in the little weeds that children might consider flowers. He gasped, and dry heaved, and dug his fingers through the mud as if reaching for the cold, unwavering stare of a woman he never got to know.

The suit he had worn was one she had bought for his first interview, and just as now as it was back then, it was three sizes too large. The cuffs of the pants had been folded up three times, to not drag and rip and fray. As if he could care, any more than he cared for the way his flesh dragged and ripped and frayed.

'Will you hug me, as we used to as children?'

Ears ringing, Michael struggled to stand up. The butterfly was drifting on the wind, down to the right and past the neighboring graves. Ones that hadn't been visited in years, flowers dead and withered away into the ground beneath them. He staggered forward, using the polished marble of his mother's grave to help himself forward. The world seemed to turn on its axis, he swayed sideways and felt as if gravity was pulling at his skin. His ears were still ringing, but underneath it, he could hear a soft lullaby.

It was getting further and further away, he watched it flicker in and out like a static image of an old tv.

His flesh felt too tight around his bones, his tongue felt too large for his mouth. Something hot rushed through him; he knew if he let the butterfly go any further, he would lose it.

Lose him.

'Daniel...'

The far-off, tinkling sound of children laughing. Playing hide-and-seek in the dark. Old chains of rusted swings crying softly in the stale wind of a dark place.

Tugging at the tie he had decided to wear today (like a noose against his skin, rope burning), shrugging the jacket off of him to rest against the grass and mud and crawling things that he couldn't see, but always felt upon him. Air burned in his lungs, a scream tried to claw its way up his throat. He swallowed it to burn in his heart instead.

He rushed forward, and though his leg still hurt from when he was fourteen and fell from the second-story balcony (the bone had stuck out from his skin, his mother hadn't seemed to notice until the neighbors heard his screams), it didn't seem important when the butterfly painted in shades shimmered in the air.

It didn't hurt at all, running forward and gaining ground and touching its paper-thin wings that were as soft as-

'Will you love me, or will you forget me like a bad dream?'

The sun seemed to fall from the sky; Michael fell alongside it.