'The Week of Winter Butterflies' by Jan Kaneen

Monday
We thought they were snow at first. It wasn’t until they started settling on the frost-scorched hawthorns that we realised. After all these desolate years. They were finally, finally something alive.

Tuesday
Stirred the last of the sugar into stove-melted ice and braved the outside to put the syrup down. They weren’t greenish-white like butterflies were, but parchment-white like wraiths or winter. Doug said they couldn’t survive another night.

Wednesday
They’d frozen solid onto the ice-white hawthorn - a curious beauty that enticed us back out. Doug wanted to touch and pricked his thumb. A drop of blood landed on a single set of brittle wings, a flash of fire in a landscape of ghosts. It soaked right in like they were made from paper.

Thursday
Slept fitfully and rose alone, went straight to the window. The whitewings were shattered like broken bone china, but oh my God, the blood-winged butterfly. It swooped huge and crimson beyond the glass, engorged and vital in the barren-white morning. Red-feathered antennae, flame-furred abdomen, thick proboscis pin-prick tipped. I was dazed and dazzled but unafraid. I felt her heat and knew what to do. I broke the window-seal and let her in. Ice and fire as she flew inside, her wings a canvas of yesterday’s sunsets. She settled on Doug and I watched transfixed - his carnelian screams as she fed and fed.

Friday
The air smelt delicious. Like iron and salt. She laid her eggs over his bone-white skin but by twilight she’d paled too and her linen-white corpse enshrouded his. I wept and wept. I don’t know who for.

Saturday
Flesh of their flesh they hatched redder and redder, teeming incarnadine, eating their fill.

Sunday
They’re pearly-white and silken spun, still and quiet as I stoke the stove.