Personification 6: Love is a Benjy Button Butterfly

Although this sonnet forms one of my personification series, it is arguably zoomorphism – giving things animal, rather than human, qualities. In defence, the animal I use has the name and qualities of a famous fictional human… Benjamin Button. I therefore feel its inclusion is vindicated.

The inspiration for this poem is that form of love that is overwhelmingly captivating at its outset, then ebbs to a faint shadow of its original self. Such love seems like a glorious butterfly at its beginning and a tiny spec of its former self at the end (an insect egg). This is the reverse lifecycle of an actual butterfly. And what being famously lived its life in reverse? Benjamin Button. So this form of love became a Benjamin Button Butterfly. (Then, for the purpose of fitting it into iambic pentameter, Benjy Button.)

Love is a Benjy Button Butterfly
Love is a Benjy Button Butterfly –
A sequined tumbler flipping into view:
Whose tricks the laws of reason do defy,
Whose incandescent form sparks fires in you.
Next Benjy Button Love’s a swollen beast
Engorged on all the bounty you provide;
Your palm and laurel leaves become its feast
Attempts to sate its needs are dreams defied.
Then Benjy Love’s a microscopic egg
Boundless emotions bound inside a shell
A Damoclian passion powder keg
Whose fragile crust, if cracked, could unleash hell.
	But warmth instead will incubate this seed,
	And from that crumb will burst a beauty freed.