Priego starts with a startling fact: a teaspoon of soil holds more living things than there are people on Earth. It's a quiet way of shrinking us down, reminding the reader that life is everywhere and mostly unnoticed. Then the poem turns to a small, almost funny scene. A butterfly lands on a girl's head and lays eggs while her mother takes photos and the girl stands perfectly still.
In the final stanza the speaker steps back and thinks about what it means to be a butterfly. Life is described as a process carried on "for life's sake," brief and full of "gruesomeness, fear and beauty." The speaker doesn't seem troubled by this. The last line, "All worth it," is calm and certain. The mood is gentle, curious and quietly accepting. The poem invites us to notice tiny lives, and suggests that even a short, difficult existence has value simply because it is lived.