[9] Waiting for Results

Sitting in the sun on a patio made of stone, I open the dictionary and look up benign. It’s already the most beautiful word in the English language. But with that silent g, that way of landing without ending, it sounds as if it alighted from another tongue, perhaps French, dropped in for a while, and stayed. Some words do that. The original name for Butterfly was Flutterby. Holding the dictionary in my lap, I sip green tea and watch a Monarch linger near the bottle brush tree. Butterflies have no mouths but taste through their feet. Some moths never eat, subsisting on stored energy from their youthful larvae days. These facts are new to me, the way the results of my labs will be. But whatever I have, I’ve had for a while. Today I’ll just find out its name. Which makes today different from yesterday. That, and the way this butterfly now alights on my finger, wings gently pulsing, then flutters away.