June 25, 2014

My dearest,

The baristas at our neighbourhood café have discovered the secret behind the mystery of their disappearing leaves: a caterpillar.

No surprise there: pots of juicy plants and flowering shrubs in their sun-soaked balcony. What’s not to like? Instead of disposing of the caterpillar, they’ve decided to adopt it. No name has been picked out yet.

You screw up your face in disgust. Creepy-crawlies are not your favourite things. Yet you tell me you too kept a caterpillar once, when you were a boy.

“It took several weeks, a month maybe, before the caterpillar went into its pupal stage and when it emerged, it wasn’t a butterfly; it was an ugly moth!”

We can’t all be pretty, can we? At least you had a moth, I say.

“Not really. Seconds after its wings dried and it started flying, a sparrow swooped down and ate it.”

Well, I say. I hope it was tastier than it looked.

I’m halfway across the café before you can throw a cushion at me.

Yours, ever and always.