Yesterday was a sky full of butterflies for Clarissa.  Her girlfriend started a conversation with him when he passed by their workstations.  He stopped to answer and when Clarissa asked him a question, he looked at her directly and answered her seriously.  He told them that he had taken leave from work to study and sit for an examination next week.  Clarissa smiled.  The sky had opened and butterflies flew out to fill the space, each blotting the sky like tracing stencils.

He had answered her a couple more times and had looked directly at her eyes.  It was ground breaking because it was only two days ago, when he was speaking to her friends and she joined in the conversation with a question posed to him, he had answered her while looking at her friend as if she was the one who asked the question.  Poor Clarissa had wondered why the hell he did not seem to acknowledge her at all when they were among mutual friends.  They did smile and acknowledge each other when they bummed into each other in the office but at other times she felt invisible.

However, today was a disappointment.  The butterflies left and the sky closed up on her.  She came to know that he had started to correspondence via email with her other colleaques.  Included in the list was a young pretty girl who just joined the company, while she was not in the list.  Janice was of course a perfect match for him.  Clarissa knew that but it did not stop her from feeling slightly jealous. 

Perhaps, the feeling was more disappointment than jealousy.  Perhaps, it was a sense of hopelessness.  She had lost before to a younger girl and now she fantasied that history was repeating itself; she was walking towards a field of wild flowers and weeds, all much younger than her.  The lone sturdy tree that stood in the middle of the field was also younger than her.  She walked and walked but she never could reach that field.  There were no butterfiles in the sky.