“Spy three suspicious butterflies flitting over hedge. Check the planes. Yep, small foliots, arms flapping wildly. Wasp rises up behind them, shoots down out of sun, zaps them with Infernos, one, two, three. Burning butterflies crash-land in pond. Alert master to my triumph. She inspects charred fragments. Her scowl deepens; turns out they were her slaves, returning with valuable information.”

“And when she was finished they laid her in earth
Flowers growing, butterflies juggling over her…
She, so light, barely pressed the earth down
How much pain it took to make her as light as that!”

“She loved him because he had brought her back to life. She had been like a caterpillar in a cocoon, and he had drawn her out and shown her that she was a butterfly.”

“She didn't want to touch the baby. Didn't want to know if she was dead. But still she reached down, her arms underneath that small body, and pulled it up against her. The body was burning with fever.
But alive. Alive!”

“Hundreds of butterflies flitted in and out of sight like short-lived punctuation marks in a stream of consciousness without beginning or end.”

“The world could burn around her, the cities turn to dust, the cries of a hundred thousand fill the air, and she would get up after the fire died and walk barefoot and burned over the charred soil in search of clean water, a weapon, a purpose. She would rebuild.”

“With a sigh she reached into her pocket and drew out a small velvet bag, which upended on the table. Two gold rings fell out, landing with a soft clink. Simon looked at them puzzled. "You want to get married?”

“and as streams of light fan out behind the darkened sun like the wings of a butterfly, i realize that i never saw true beauty until now.”

“Words betrayed her: beautiful butterflies in her mind; dead moths when she opened her mouth for their release into the world.”

“With a fork drive Nature out,
She will ever yet return;
Hedge the flowerbed all about,
Pull or stab or cut or burn,
She will ever yet return.”