[nine candles/where have all the monarchs gone] Painting

inspired by a darkly reverent winter of witnessing, healing, and learning to treat myself with sanctity extra thick texture where have all the monarchs gone they used to flock around the purple butterfly bush my mother let overgrow in our old backyard and i would dance among them in orange and black polka-dotted clouds of magic... a butterfly flaps its wings in absolute miraculousness with so much effort but such simultaneous ease and these wings hold the secret to life the balance of ease and effort of strength and fragility and as the world grows full of dis-ease neuroticism insecurity and hardness the monarchs disappear and where there were orange and black polka-dotted clouds and streams there are now spots and specks - a singular butterfly to spread the lesson made even more miraculous in its singularity as we become even more uncomfortable with acceptance commitment collaboration and vulnerability losing our unity in the mass of chaos and suspicion and the butterflies lose their masses in the unification of destruction oh, where have all the monarchs gone?