Resources for Loss

"Butterfly,” by Corinne Bailey Rae, contributed by Rick Zhou (2025)

To me, “Butterfly” is a song that invites imagery of motherly protection, of lacquer-stained cherry wood homes and stained-glass windows in libraries filled with fiction, with little intricate wireframe stars, shapes, and animals floating through the air in slow suspension (are those wires?), and then in flight. Beiges, khaki, and chamois tones, and caramel and turmeric. Sounds of children yelling and playing outside the window, birds of paradise and doves that seem to exist latently within the song. And a heart-tuned backing track that melts the whole vision together. Corinne Bailey Rae lets her voice flow in with ease, only slightly cracked by a sense of longing or nostalgia—an awareness of pending loss. Strings that enter with love and leave too soon; horns that tap in with accents of joy; a wind chime that sends the soul to movement; a chorus of voice that rings support and protection. Peace.

In my mother’s house
There’s a photograph
Of a day gone past
Always makes me laugh
There’s a little girl
Wary of the world
She got much to learn
Get her fingers burned
An affinity
Between you and me
’Cause we’re family, yeah
Said that I’d be fine
Give me all your time
And I left your side
Like a butterfly

The chorus is ecstasy to me, the ideal form of early-2000’s Disney Channel advertising; slightly faded plasma screens that, when stepped into, reveal a crisp and soft-to-touch reality of butterflies and flourishing and light and movement and innocence, but a purity that doesn’t seem naive; it is perhaps just simply true. Correct, even? It is, in my mind, an encapsulation of a childhood at a peak.

In my mother’s house
There was happiness
I wrapped my myself in it
Was my chrysalis
As my life unfolds
See a pattern through
Of you protecting me
And I protecting you
What was that you’d say?
Make your own mistakes
And when you’re grown
Make sure that you remain the same
Now I realize
What was on your mind
When I left your side
Like a butterfly

Shower me with your love
Color everyday
You make the milk-gold sun
Shine on me, yeah
Lift me up so high
Watch me fly away
And you give me life
Like a butterfly.


 

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