Yellow Wings

By Shannon McPherson

Esther slumped in her wheelchair and watched butterflies flutter outside the hospital window. The right side of her face drooped, a residual effect from her stroke several years prior. She came daily to watch butterflies, enraptured by their movements, and she yearned to stretch her legs, unmovable since her stroke.

Her eyes followed a yellow butterfly as it drifted into a spider’s web, its bright wings beating frantically as it tried to escape. She watched it struggle against sticky webs, its wings gradually beating slower. Esther watched it fade and realized, in that moment, what it felt like to be trapped.