Liberating Grama's Butterflies

She kept them in a little box, with saved postcards
and flower decals from the 1920's
neatly pressed butterflies, encased in a plastic sleeve -
Much to the opposite of her cluttered, musty house.

I found them in my father's stuff.
Her dutiful son who couldn't throw her things away,
so they were interred in a box, on a shelf, which
slowly becomes buried by the next box
Until there are no more shelves.
Then begin to fill the corners of the room, the floor,
Until, like James Bond movies of the shrinking room
the walls seem to close in slowly, ready to crush the person
inside.

I slipped the butterflies from their plastic,
careful to keep them intact.
I think I could hear them start to breath
I set them on a little bush,
where they absorbed sunshine
newly beautiful to the world.