Lyrics

Chasing Butterflies (feat. Jerrica Escoto)
(Gill Sotu, Jerrica Escoto)

Chorus
I’m chasing butterflies hoping they, lead to another life
Maybe to a better place, will your love be there
Sometimes I get paralyzed, navigating through this life
If I could make it to your side, will your love be there?
Will your love be there?

In the 3rd grade, my grandfather was reincarnated into a butterfly
At least, that’s what my grandmother swears by
She swears that on the day we buried him he turned
into a butterfly that landed on her dress
And since then, she’s been looking for him wherever she goes

She does laundry everyday
She waits by my door antsy for my long days to end
so that she can take the day's dirty off my clothes
and find another reason to do more laundry
Honestly, I think she cleans my stuff twice
She’s even stopped separating the whites with the color
My white panties and tees have gone pink
She is a frantic domestic
Hoping for butterflies to land on her hands as she hangs clothes
and sometimes, sometimes she runs inside of the house
So excited that the only words that come out of her mouth are,
“Grandpa, your grandpa he visited me today.”
She keeps her love in a shoebox with an assortment of butterfly hairpins
that she never wears but collects anyway
because they remind her of him
He left too soon.
52 years wasn’t good enough
She tells me they both agreed on 65
And now it’s been 13 years since she’s been alive
because she died the same day he did
She died the same day he did

Chorus
I’m chasing butterflies hoping they, lead to another life
Maybe to a better place, will your love be there
Sometimes I get paralyzed, navigating through this life
If I could make it to your side, will your love be there?
Will your love be there?

Verse 2
The world stopped spinning
Time stopped ticking
13 years ago she put herself into a cocoon
Since then has been patiently waiting to turn into a butterfly and look for him
but he’s only been showing up during daily chores
or in old shoe boxes and it is not enough
And now I spend days, watching my grandmother from the inside of my house
Stand outside with outstretched arms spanning the length of
overlapping time zones
Calling all butterflies from yesterday, tomorrow, and today
And I think to myself
Now how the hell do I even begin to start loving you?
Because I want years
I want matching utensils on dinner plates
And a refrigerator full of magnets of places we’ve been
With a long to-do list of where we’re trying to go
I want photographs turned old from years of memories and even if it’s
2010 and damn near impossible for photos to age now,
I’d still wanna Photoshop it into sepia-tones just so I have tangible
proof that we grew old together
I want to tell you to stop smoking
Even when most days I’m the reason why you light one
Contrary to your past, wear a seatbelt
Eat breakfast. Drink more water.
Stop driving so fast
Where you’re trying to go will still be there when you get there
And stop joking around about cancer
I don’t want to be cocooned
I refuse to be born with wings not good enough to fly
I refuse to be confined within loveless boundaries
With a hollow atmosphere that only echoes sad songs for the lonely
Hold me
Tell me we’ll have so many damn magnets on our refrigerator that we’ll
have to get two
Tell me the sepia-tones will be as old as the moon
Tell me we have 65 PLUS years ahead of us
And that I won’t ever have to waste years chasing butterflies

Chorus
I’m chasing butterflies hoping they, lead to another life
Maybe to a better place, will your love be there
Sometimes I get paralyzed, navigating through this life
If I could make it to your side, will your love be there?
Will your love be there?