Summary Of The Poem By Mealdez

When Meléndez is describing the whole route of the butterfly and what it does within the community, the structure of the poem becomes much more spread out and divided between lines. The sentences become longer and are split between multiple stanzas rather than just one, showing more time spent on his thoughts. The presence of this butterfly in his neighborhood becomes impactful to the author as he watches it’s every move and the reach people are using to try and get to it. The reason the butterfly seems to be out of place is “because of all his beautiful colors”. The idea of color is usually associated with aspects of feeling and with color being something unidentified and thus, a stranger to the community, there is a lack of different colors within the
These serve as the last aspects of identity he places on the community, highlighting the fact that within all of them, he really is trying to make himself believe of “el barrio” as a paradise so he can embrace it fully. However, there are still certain things he is reminded of there being a lack of and thus, he finds it hard to overcome them. As a result, the line in which the word “away” is by itself draws attention to the fact these aspects leaving through the butterfly are very impactful towards the author. But the most impact comes when the butterfly manages to fall down into the sewer and as a result, “now he was part of us”. This realization causes the author to cry because he sees how coming into this community causes all of the things associated with the butterfly, love, hope, dreams, and colors, to die out after pridefully roaming the streets and buildings. Structurally, this line is farther from the rest because it takes him to allow himself to come to this realization, seeing it as something he didn’t want to have associate with the reality as a slash is present right before the