Lessons From the Kissing Booth

I'm pretty simple to figure out, you know, just this clown who went over Niagara Falls in a barrel because it seemed like a good idea and got my stupid clown shoes stuck in the rocks. Sheepish, I might ask you to fetch my red foam clown nose from where it is bobbing in the shallows. My flowerpot hat is probably full of water and already sunk. I won't drown, most likely, but I'll definitely spend a lot of time sputtering foolishly and cursing the waterfall for being so tempting.

Those electric blue butterflies you find in all the shadowboxes, the sparkling Blue Morpho, have tiny ears hidden on their wings, ears more complicated than moth ears--ears that can tell the difference between pitches, not just hear a sound and fly away. They don't know quite why a butterfly might need such advanced little ears, although it probably has something to do with the difference between a singing bird and an attacking bird, between resting and running away. But think of all the songs you could hear, as a butterfly with ears, moving so often and ranging so far, all of the winds moving through all of the stems, all of the gossip from all of the bugs. The different tones in shafts of sunlight at different times of day and the soft fall of the leaves. To be so beautiful and hear so much, spending all of your days sitting quiet on flowers and just listening.

I think I would have made a much better butterfly than I do a girl.