Alizey Jalal
Karachi, Pakistan
2025, Junior, Creative Writing

They say grief is a season. But no one warns you it can last for years, looping endlessly like a stubborn monsoon that refuses to pass. Mine began on a mild winter morning — the kind of morning when everything is too still, as if the world is holding its breath.

We were burying my grandfather.

The cemetery was old — the kind with crooked headstones and soil that had swallowed more stories than anyone would ever write. I don’t remember who was crying or what prayers were said. What I remember is a butterfly.

It was the only thing that moved in that paralyzed moment. Pale yellow, with faint black markings along its wings, it circled twice before resting on the corner of his fresh grave.

I stood frozen, unsure what to make of it. It didn’t flutter away like most do when people come near. It just… stayed.

That’s when my mother whispered, “They say butterflies carry souls. Maybe he’s saying goodbye.”

I didn’t believe her. Not then. But the image lodged itself in my mind like a seed in dry earth.

In the months that followed, I started noticing butterflies everywhere. Not in flocks or swarms — just one, always alone. On my windowsill during a math test I couldn’t focus on. Outside the grocery store as the city smoldered under another heatwave. Near my school, where trees once shaded the footpaths but now stood amputated, roots exposed like broken bones.

Each time, I thought of him.

My grandfather was never loud about his love for the earth. But it was in everything he did — the way he rinsed rice water to feed the plants, the way he scolded me gently for wasting water, the way he told stories of mango trees that bent so low you could pluck fruit while sitting down.

He believed in simplicity. In cycles. In the gentle arrogance of nature, how it never needed us, but always tolerated our presence.

And yet we never returned the favor.

The last story he told me — just days before the hospital swallowed him — was about a time when his village would be blanketed with butterflies. He described it like a dream: clouds of color drifting through the air, resting on hibiscus and jasmine, undisturbed by noise.

“Now?” he had said, voice dry and cracking like old wood. “Now they only come one at a time. Like they’re checking in… to see if we’re worth returning to.”

I didn’t understand the weight of that until the butterfly at his grave.

I began to collect small rituals — things that made me feel like I was still talking to him. I visited his grave monthly. I started keeping a notebook of every butterfly I saw: where, when, how it made me feel. And slowly, I started reading.

About climate collapse.

About vanishing pollinators.

About how butterflies, like canaries in coal mines, are among the first to disappear when ecosystems fall apart.

What once felt spiritual began to feel scientific.

And somehow, that made it more urgent.

The butterfly was not just a symbol of my grandfather.

It was a symptom of our loss.

Two summers after his death, a wildfire broke out just fifteen miles from where he was buried. The news called it “moderate,” but ash still fell on our porch. The sky turned orange-gray. Birds disappeared. My younger sister cried every night for a week, too young to understand, but old enough to feel that something unnatural was happening.

We evacuated our home for two days. Just a precaution, the officials said. I packed light — clothes, a power bank, a letter he’d once written to me.

I didn’t pack the notebook. I didn’t think it mattered.

But when we returned, something inside me shifted.

I planted milkweed in the backyard. Researched native flowers. Installed a bee hotel with the help of a local conservancy. At first, it felt performative — like trying to put out a forest fire with a paper cup. But with each sprouting leaf, I felt closer to him.

And then, one day, a butterfly returned. Not yellow this time. A bright monarch, trembling gently as it rested on the milkweed.

I cried.

Because this time, I didn’t wonder if it was him.

I just knew he would’ve smiled.

The butterfly on his grave wasn’t just a goodbye. It was a beginning. A call to attention.

My grandfather used to say, “The earth doesn’t scream. It whispers. And when we stop listening to whispers, we only hear disaster.”

His words echo more now than ever. The disasters are no longer distant headlines. They live in our lungs, our water, our food. They dance across the news as heat domes, flash floods, and melting glaciers.

We grow numb. We post pictures of surreal skies tinted orange and call it “aesthetic.” We make jokes about air quality and still forget to carry reusable bags.

But I believe butterflies are still checking in.

Still asking: Are you listening yet?

Last week, I visited the cemetery again. The neem tree is still there, brittle but breathing. The headstone still chipped, but standing. I sat next to it, brushing off dry leaves, and waited.

I don’t know what for.

And then — a shadow moved. Yellow wings, soft as breath. It hovered, circled once, then landed — not on the grave, but on my knee.

I didn’t move.

I didn’t breathe.

I just sat with it.

We shared a silence thick with memory.

And for the first time, I didn’t feel like I was mourning him.

I felt like I was walking beside him — continuing a journey he never got to finish.

I no longer see butterflies as fragile.

They are persistent.

They are survivors.

And like them, I carry loss in color. I carry grief that flutters. I carry the quiet hope that if I plant enough flowers, if I clear enough space, if I remember enough stories — they will return.

And maybe, so will he.

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The Last Butterfly of a Vanishing Season