Author’s Note: I wrote this for an assignment in my creative writing class.

…Yeah.

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Wedding Ties and Butterflies

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It was in the peaceful afternoon, on a lovely day in the spring that I ran from my responsibilities and into the seductive arms of my once forgotten childhood. The forest was deathly silent then, and I knew it was a rarity, as I had lived there all my life. Some part of me knew that the forest, and all of its inhabitants, were silent with mourning for me.

My beautiful, white dress whipped in the wind as I ran, was torn on branches and bushes as I fled deeper into the woods. The longer I ran, the lighter I felt, as if I might eventually fly away if I just kept going. Honestly, it was all I wanted: to simply fly away.

But my exhaustion caught the better of me, and I soon found myself leaning against a tree and gasping for air, eyes closed with old tears encrusted around them. I placed my hands delicately over my racing heart, a heart that was too young, too fragile for my situation– the situation that was evident by the glittering band around my finger and the white dress that adorned my body. Remembering the ring, the silver shackle, I quickly tore it from my finger and hurled it across the forest, not caring enough to see where it landed. I didn’t want it, anyway. I didn’t want any of this.

With that thought, tears sprang to my eyes and I wept openly yet again. Why me? The question had been recurring in my mind for months, but never had it brought such agony and unrest. I hadn’t asked for this. I hadn’t hinted at it in the way most women would. I was young, inexperienced, and I still had so much to do before I promised myself to another. It seemed so unfair that the choice hadn’t been mine.

“I just want to make my own decisions,” I repeated the words I had so often screamed at my parents.

“I just want to give myself the time I need,” I repeated the words I had once cried into my fiancé’s shoulder.

“I just want to be free!” As the words flew from my lips, riding my breath with helpless anguish, I felt something come from within me, a ripple effect as my body shifted and changed its form. I was no longer a woman as my arms were replaced with wings, and my abdomen replaced with an insect-like thorax. I had become a butterfly, free from my human tethers: the white dress and the silver ring. No longer bound by my previous form, I flew away, and I was free.