Age of Butterflies — By Bryane Alfonso
artwork by Ciara Duffy
For this moment, my nephew is two years old. He and my older sister are laughing as they chase me around the splash pad. My nephew is wearing a pair of Mater crocs and either blue or orange swimming trunks. My sister teaches him to cup his hands and let the stream of water pool in his tiny palms. I pretend I’m running from him, shrieking, arms raised in mock surrender. There’s not much water left in his palms when he throws it at me, but droplets still splash the back of my exposed calves, my pants rolled up to my knees. My sister and I have taken off our socks, stuffed them into our sneakers and set them aside next to our phones and bags. I catch up to my nephew beneath the red or green dragon spouting water from his nose. He stares up, wide-eyed and trembling, but I crouch, whisper in his ear that we should wet Mami, too, and he forgets all about the dragon looming over us. We chase my sister, and he laughs maniacally when I kick at a puddle of water, dousing her jeans. My sister chastises me, says my name in the same tone of voice she would use when I was ten or twelve and wouldn’t stop annoying her. My nephew starts kicking at the puddle, too, jumping in it, yelling “¡mira!” when water fills his Crocs and then trickles back out through the holes.
He soon abandons the chase and the puddle, splashing over to the yellow snake dipping in and out of the ground. He plays the water spouts on the snake’s body like a flute, running his hands back and forth, pressing his fingers against the individual holes. He grins with all his bright, small teeth, his shoulders and torso wiggling with barely restrained laughter.
But he keeps coming back to the red fire hydrant. He keeps circling around it, squatting down, pressing his hands against the flat white discs where water pours out. He stands, then tilts his head to one side. When my sister asks what he’s looking for, he doesn’t answer.
I can’t stop staring at the giant blue mushroom. Sheets of water pour from the underside of the cap, striking the ground with a roar. I have been here before. There’s an old photograph somewhere, deep in my mother’s phone or her memory. I was six or seven or eight, wearing a yellow or an orange bathing suit. Maybe it was pink. I know that I am standing beneath the blue mushroom, and there must be a smile on my face. There must be children running and playing behind me. My sister must be behind the camera and our mother—where else would she have been if not completing our trio, a triangle of cracked and broken corners? I wonder if she remembers this moment the same way I do. I wonder why the mushroom still seems so tall.
My nephew sticks his hand into the stream of the fire hydrant, staring. Is he marveling at the pressure? The mechanics? Is he thinking of what to do next—splash us, stick his face into the stream, walk away and confront the red or green dragon? My sister and I stand on either side of him. As we look down on his curly hair, his furrowed eyebrows, his rosy cheeks, I think maybe the triangle has shifted, its corners mended with Lightning McQueen-themed Band-Aids. I lock eyes with my sister and we both smile. My nephew breaks the moment by clapping his hands in the stream, shrieking with delight as water flies everywhere.
My sister and I laugh. My nephew joins in, proud of himself. I wish I had captured the sound, like a Monarch butterfly beating its wings in a mesh habitat. I wish I had bottled it into a small glass jar, slipped it into my pocket to keep it safe with the press of my fingers around it.
Bryane Alfonso is a lesbian, Cuban writer who was born and raised in Miami. They are currently working on their MFA in Creative Writing at Florida International University. Their poetry and prose has been featured in Olit Magazine.