“Little Friend” by K. Leigh

Today had not been a good day to begin with. My car wouldn’t start…again. This was the second time this week I was late to work and there was nothing I could do about it. Maybe it was the universe’s way of saying “Get out of this job that does not pay enough and go to another better job that also doesn’t pay enough.” Whatever the universe was telling me, my job was saying another.

That’s right. I got pulled into my manager’s office to discuss my habitual lateness. I had told them about my car, but after so many times, it starts to seem more like a made up excuse rather than an actual problem in which I do not have the money to fix. But according to my manager, I need this job and why not put some money aside to fix my car? It was easier for her to say, but if only she knew. My manager was nice enough to care about what I did over the weekend, but didn’t know about my home situation and I liked it like that. We weren’t friends and never would be.

After a couple of hours being yelled at on the phone by angry clients, it was time for a cigarette. I needed the menthol drags that calmed me as much as I could be calmed in a fifteen minute period of silence. It was during this time that I noticed that all the thin tiny yellow caterpillars were out and about finally. One even crawled up onto my finger.

I lifted it to my face and told it my problems thinking that may help. What if it absorbed my feelings that I was having, carried them into its chrysalis, and flew away with them – absolving and freeing me of my dark thoughts? That would be nice and it was much needed.

I said goodbye to my little caterpillar friend and placed it on a nice leaf in the small flower bed outside of the door to work.

In and out of the building I went during my work day. I needed time outside and away from everyone while I ate my lunch or smoked my cigarette on my last fifteen minute break. Close to the end of my shift, my mind drifted to the little caterpillar who knew more of my thoughts than my best friend. I wondered what it was up to and if it enjoyed a little snack from the leaf I had left him on. I quickly snapped out of it when the client came to the phone after putting me on hold. Another complaint – why was I hoping for anything else when I knew that a positive answer was a rare thing.

After hanging up and typing up my notes, I felt a little tickle on my forearm. I ignored it to keep working, but it came back, moving ever so slightly. I glanced down to see my caterpillar friend! It was just going along trying to find its way to whatever destination it had.I chuckled to myself and watched it to pass the time.

When I clocked out, I made sure the caterpillar came with me. It didn’t need to be locked up in this office left without proper food. And since it was stubborn, it joined me for the ride home. I let it crawl into the front garden of my house. There it could eat its fill and become the butterfly it was meant to be.

A few days later I notice a cocoon under one of the leaves on a plant. “Fuck,” I said to myself. “It won’t even be a butterfly. It’s a goddamn moth.”

How quickly my adoration for the little caterpillar I had bonded with turned to disappointment.