Where Do The Butterflies Live?

My poetry journey continues. This semester, I challenged myself and my poetry in different ways. The last poem of the semester that we did was the lyric poem. I was on a mission to make mine short and concise. I was inspired by one of the football players in my poetry classes. I loved how he could write short and concise poems with a big impact. So I wanted to shoot for something like him. Then I wanted to try to be more abstract in my thinking and in my poem as a whole. I tend to write in a narrative style and  also in the confessional mode. I am usually story telling or capturing a moment and telling the readers in a straight forward way. Most of the time, I am spelling it out for you. So I wanted to be more abstract like other famous poets. So here was my attempt at the short and concise while trying to be abstract in a lyric style poem. 

Where Do The Butterflies Live? 
Where do the butterflies live?
And how can I set them free?
I want to see them take flight,
I want to feel them in me.
They’ll burst bright into the open
like colorful confetti in the air.
I want to twirl around, be a little girl
and let them dance in my hair.
They can be ballerinas too
and bounce gracefully in pink tutus.
Let them swim in my brown ocean waves
to visit the mermaids in my mind.
They know the sweetest silence—
don’t share words of wisdom.
They left them in their cocoons.
They don’t need anything else
besides feelings and fluttering wings.
They are ready to fly, faithfully anywhere,
to spark something magical, to share
this feeling they’ve always felt. 
Can I let them loose all by myself or
does somebody else have to ignite
the light to let them flood free?

Sparkle & Shine.

Rachel