HIS COY MISTRESS

The yellow brimstone butterfly has a double heart, threaded like long beans on a string, and maybe
that gave him an added intensity and tremulous ardour. He was beautiful; everything about him
breathed life intense quivering life charged with the amorous dance of summer. And he fell in
love of course, for that is what he was there for.
Perhaps it was her stillness that attracted him; a quaint awkwardness, almost spastic, helpless and
stricken as if she had been told to stay put and dared not move. His tender heart was moved to
pity. His ceaseless fluttering invited her to dance, but she was shy, her head bowed slightly in
denial, immovable.
She was irresistible he clung to her dazed and soothed by this impenetrable calm. She came from
a tranquil family; her brothers and sisters were immobile too but none had the quaint, dazed,
faded look that so appealed to him, for she was not in the first flush of her youth it must be
admitted, and the once bright orange of her flanks had dimmed to dusky peach.
As the summer wore on day after day he returned helplessly to his cruel beauty, who seemed
unmoved by all the fragile passion of his soul. Imperceptibly the shadows lengthened as the days
grew shorter, and he knew that time was running out, for he would not have much longer to live.
Would she not once respond to his passion with a sign of life? Would she not breathe one sigh to
recompense the long hours of helpless attendance on her loveliness?
But then one October morning as the mists of autumn shrouded the quiet garden and the leaves
were turning softly to a rustling gold, tragedy struck. For she was gone! Inexplicably she and her
family had disappeared as though they had never been.
Disconsolately he peered through the window of the shed for a sight of her and there was his love,
his adored and stricken mistress, now forever dumb, lying prostrate in a plastic basket along with all
the other clothes-pegs, as the garden darkened in the autumn rain.

E. J. Ward 2014