The Weight of Wings

I keep a pressed blue flower inside the pages of a dictionary, its petals now so thin they are translucent, like the skin of an onion. It was picked in a garden that no longer exists, during a summer when time felt as heavy and slow as honey. When I touch it, I am not merely touching a dried bloom; I am touching the exact moment I decided to stop running and simply look. We spend so much of our lives moving through the world with our heads down, counting the steps, measuring the distance, and ignoring the quiet miracles that land briefly on our shoulders. We forget that beauty does not ask for our permission to exist, nor does it wait for us to be ready. It arrives, fragile and unbidden, and then it is gone, leaving behind only the ghost of a color or the faint impression of a shape. If we are lucky, we learn to hold our breath long enough to witness the grace of a departure. What remains when the movement finally stops?

Ryszard Wierzbicki has captured this fleeting grace in his beautiful image titled A Butterfly in Color. Does this quiet encounter remind you of a moment you once held still?