RJ

Greta oto. They are found down in Venezuela all the way to Panama. A member of the brush-footed butterfly family. Only two inches long in wingspan. They're my favorite insect.

I met a man once and he wanted to leave everything. He had a bottle in his hand and I was afraid he was going to inhale it all and let his light go out like I'd seen so many go before.

I told him he couldn't leave, because then he would never get to see these fascinating and beautiful butterflies from down south. The butterflies with glass wings that are only two inches wide with tiny bodies.

He asked me if that was my only reason to still be here, a tiny little insect. I told him, no, not really, but it was a reason. One of many, I guess. I stayed up with him all night, and I don't think I've ever been more exhausted in my life.

He told me about the things he had seen and done and felt and I wished my whole heart out that things like wars and sadness and emptiness didn't have to exist. I'll never know what it's like to hold a gun and have to decide between my own life and someone else's, what it's like to come home to a broken family and parents who don't love me. But I felt it all that night. I felt it and I hated it.

I asked him to stay up with me and see the sunrise, to not leave it all behind. To take it all day at a time. I don't know if he believed me or even listened but I tried everything I could not to let his light go out.

We parted ways after, and I'll probably never see him again but I hope the little feeling I get behind my heart means that he's okay. That he looks at each sunrise and remembers that a silly teenager stuck in the mid-west really does care.

I still check the paper sometimes to make sure a young man who fought for our country hasn't left and that maybe he believed enough in things like glasswinged butterflies and sunrises and happiness. And maybe he believed enough in a silly teenager.