« Su un prato d’erba medica una bambina inseguiva le farfalle con le mani di retino aperte nell’aria oppure le prendeva per le ali, quando si ferma- vano sui fiori. Strette tra il pollice e l’indice, come un velo di zucchero colorato, avrebbe potuto mangiarle. Ma le bastava parlarci, muovendo appena le labbra o mormorando nel pensiero, fino a che queste, posate sulla spalla, non volavano più via: si erano affezionate a lei. E invece non molto tempo dopo, erano foglie indebolite e inerti. Dopo alcuni giochi in cui, come assonnate o addomesticate, rispondevano a tutti i suoi desideri, la bambina capiva che era venuta l’ora di seppellirle, nel sottoscala dove, dentro una corolla di sassi bianchi, ramoscelli incrociati e fiori mosci, si era formato un piccolo cimitero. »

« A little girl would chase butterflies through an alfalfa field, with her hands open like a net in the air or she would catch them by their wings when they stopped on flowers. Held between the thumb and forefinger, they were like colored sugar coatings that she might have eaten. But it was enough for her to talk to them, barely moving her lips or murmuring in her mind, until the butterflies, resting on her shoulder, no longer fluttered off: they had become attached to her. And yet not long afterwards, they would be inert, enfeebled leaves. After playing some games in which they responded, as if tame or drowsy, to all her desires, the little girl understood that the time had come to bury them in a place, beneath a staircase, where, inside a corolla of white pebbles, crisscrossed twigs, and flaccid flowers, she had created a small cemetery. »

Franca Mancinelli, The Butterfly Cemetery: Selected Prose 2008-2021, The Bitter Oleander Press, 2022