ORIGIN: It’s a family tree.
Rabbits belong in the moon, and I like to tie my hair, but brother was the lunatic in the family. He chose a bird, but I patterned myself after a butterfly because beauty picks most every lock.
I was a mousy little thing, not anybody’s pick of the litter. I thought the world would just keep on turning, but one day I saw a butterfly and everything came to a standstill. You would say that it took my breath away, but I pinned all my hopes on that butterfly at first sight. And my life has been all the richer for it.
Butterfly wings are covered in dust, and I credit the invention of make-up to them. I learned at an early age to only show myself in the best light and make hearts flutter left right and center. Storms may not sink ships anymore, but the universe sprang from an act of violence, and I have the glint of one such star in my eyes.
Mice don’t draw attention to themselves, but beauty can’t help leaving a trail of broken hearts. I thought I wouldn’t be able to have the best of both worlds, but all I had to do was look like butter wouldn’t melt in my mouth.
Beauty doesn’t need an instruction manual. I know which buttons to push and which heartstrings to tug. Mice prefer the shorter path, and butterflies are usually done and gone by the end of the second week. I have no illusions about life, and maybe that is why nothing and no one can put a real smile on my face.
I hate people that are easily fooled. Beauty is pain, but there is nothing more effortless than crying on command. Just look at those butterflies, at the readily available tears on the lower part of their wings. I have spent years mastering the art of fake smiling, and I deserve to be appreciated for that beauty.
Donkeys are stubborn, mice are cowards and butterflies are colorful. Tell me something that made you plant your feet and refuse to move, something that made you scramble and hide, and last but not least, something that brightens your world.
1. I had just about learned to count on my fingers, and it was my first time seeing so much snow. It beckoned and I followed. Camellias were the flower my mother liked best, and I watched my nose and my fingers turn red. I knew that it was just a matter of time before my mother liked me by association. That’s why when she hollered for me to come inside, I played deaf.
2. I still haven’t decided whether it’s a blessing or a curse, but I have good ears. Slammed doors hold no secrets for me. It took me a while, but I learned in which direction to make myself scarce. I never knew that kisses on the cheek are a form of greeting, but by the time I turned 12, I could already outrun my mother’s slaps.
3. I like heart-shaped lollipops. Crunching them as loudly as I can. To let my heart know that it isn’t the only one.
1. One summer night, I dropped a newly bought ice cream on the ground. My father said that we would be late for the firework display, but I couldn’t leave until I watched that ice cream melt away with my own eyes. Summer is the season of ghosts, and I told my father that I was too young to already be haunted by a what-if.
2. I like things that go in one ear and out the other. That’s the secret to not being afraid. My feet hurt from running, and hiding only made things worse because it gave blood a chance to stick to the ground and haunt me. But I finally gathered enough courage to ask my parents for a winter cease fire. White breaths are the only words I can’t unsee, no matter how hard I try, and I’ll always be grateful to my parents for not adding to them.
3. There’s a flickering light outside my window. I don’t know what brainwaves look like, but I hope mine take after it. Because I would sure hate to be eaten alive by moths.
1. There was a deciduous tree in our backyard. My older brother was all done with his exams, and I remember pressing all the leaves I could fit between the pages of his books. He began a new chapter of his life, and I was quickly forgotten. It hurt, so much that I wouldn’t wish it on anyone. That’s why, sticky tape in hand, I set out to make that tree’s new chapter look just like the last.
2. The sheets on my bed were red. Not the color of fallen leaves, but the red behind my eyelids. I’ve lost count of how many times I felt powerless, but every time I did, I hid under those sheets. I closed my eyes and wished my heart out. Until that color spread out like ripples across water and, slowly but surely, I became stronger.
3. I have a little plastic plant. There isn’t a speck of dust on it. It’s the first thing that greets me when I come back home. And I wouldn’t change my monotone life for anything.
1. I don’t remember my first haircut, but I’ve been told that, unlike my sister, I didn’t cry at the sight of the scissors. That’s where they must have gotten the wrong impression. My sister still lets my mother comb her hair, but I’ve already cut the puppet strings. It took more than I would have liked, but my mother has finally run out of tears.
2. I used to tiptoe into my father’s study to borrow books above my grade level. The unnaturally bright colors of children’s books have always given me a headache, and long before I could reach the shelf, I had my father’s well-worn shoes at eye level. I never had any illusions about the world, but the same can’t be said about my parents. They wanted to raise a happy child. That’s why I had to do my reading behind their back.
3. I have no use for colors, so how about I tell you the reason for my smile instead? I can pay my way. And even if my creditors come calling one day, I won’t owe them a day over 16 years.
Some people have butterflies in their stomach, I have butterfly-shaped ears. I don’t remember my first love, but I will never forget the first words that changed the trajectory of my heart. First come, first served. My great, great, great grandfather had a seaview room. The water spots on the window could be traced back to whale spray, but he never ventured too far from his hole in the wall. Somebody else made soap out of those whales, and by the time I was born, that window was clean as a bone. But I won’t let my great, great, great grandchildren suffer the same loss I have. One day I will find the perfect fit for this fishing net, and I will protect it with my life.
Butterflies don’t eat, they drink. They would be wasted in my stomach, but my ears are a different story. I like screaming underwater. I find it very reassuring. It makes me feel untouchable. I’ve heard that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I have bled from a thousand cuts, and it doesn’t even compare. That’s why I put that butterfly-shaped barrier in place. And you know what? Now, when I see someone mouth the words I love you, I’m reminded of the snap of a mouse trap, and it’s enough to make me lose my appetite.
I am not a well-read mouse, I don’t know anything about atoms and molecules. I am all ears, harmless words I have picked up here and there and voices that threaten to eat me out of house and home. I call those voices caterpillars because they are a string of words with very sharp teeth, that eventually turn into butterflies, coloring me to someone else’s liking. Most days I feel like an iridescent bruise that will never fade away. I am not what I eat, I am what I have been told, and I hate it. But it’s not as easy as brandishing a butterfly net. Most harm stays done.
Storms are heartless, dry-eyed things. My mother used to say that I was a butterfly-eared mouse, too scared to believe her words. The last thing she said to me was that just because love can’t be seen, it didn’t give me the right to lay waste to her heart. The next day, I left without looking back. I didn’t have the words to make her understand that I’ve only ever felt comfortable around hunger. I can feel my stomach growling and I know my way around a mouse trap. What more could a mother wish for her child?
When the cat’s away, the mice will play. Good thing one half of the butterfly it was chasing was there to sound the alarm in your ears. Anyway, tell me what you got away with.
My mother inherited a beautiful pearl necklace, but the mere sight of it brought tears to her eyes. I think that’s why she locked it up in a drawer and threw away the key. If I had to describe my mother, I would say that her mind was always somewhere else and her heart was never in the time she spent with me. But that necklace brought out her eyes, and I scrambled for the key. What can I say, I had an irrepressible urge to break that necklace and play marbles with it.
I grew up in a postcard perfect house, where yellows and reds never went out in the fireplace. There was an evergreen tree outside my window. It faced west and my father hung a swing from it because I promised not to swing too high. He probably didn’t want me to get off on the wrong foot with the outside world and that’s why he agreed. But warming my feet on the sunset was the last thing on my mind. What I needed was to get acquainted with the grey smoke coming out the chimney post haste, and that’s what I did. But I made sure to leave an indelible smile on that swing to spare my father’s feelings.
My parents had better things to do than go into my room. A cleaner came on Mondays, and I had a more than generous allowance. It wasn’t long before I ran out of space. I rhymed, I doodled, I nail-polished those walls to within an inch of their life. My nightmares, my hopes, all the things that bled from my heart eventually found their way onto those walls because forewarned is forearmed. Don’t you hate it when things get lost in translation? I wanted to leave that house guilt-free. I gave them a chance to know their son, but time doesn’t wait for anyone. My parting gift were four white walls.
My mother got my sister in the divorce, and I spent all that first summer handwriting letters under the sheets, with sweat dripping from my eyes, while my father was at work. When there was no response, I told myself that the motto was Neither rain, nor snow, nor sleet, not hail. That it’s nobody’s fault that heat brings out laziness, and those letters would surely reach my sister with the next summer storm. But by December I had already run out of excuses, and I saw no point in hiding my red eyes from my father anymore.
If I told you that I spent most of my childhood looking at the moon, would you believe me? Some people wait for the other shoe to drop, but I kept looking for the rest of the mouse trap. I was convinced that the moon smelled of dead mice, and I didn’t want to be another statistic. Moonlight could keep its magic. I didn’t want to fall in love with my butterfly colors, only for that trap to snap and leave me for dead. This is not how I saw myself going through life, but as they say, c’est la vie.
Before cheese became the center of my world, I thought the moon was a cautionary tale. It’s a cruel world, and she chose to tuck tail and run, but not too far because she still needed something familiar in her life. I may be a mouse, but I didn’t want a moth-eaten heart beating inside my chest. I know it’s dust to dust, but I wanted to leave behind the colors of a butterfly’s wings. I wanted my last words to be: “At least I tried to change all this cruelty.” But my stomach growled and I followed in everybody else’s footsteps.
If it were up to me, I would cut the moon in wedges. Butterflies scare me. I don’t know what I would do if I grew into someone I couldn’t recognize in the mirror. I hear a door slamming shut in the flap of butterfly wings. A grounded child, that won’t come out and play ever again, because apparently innocence is to be punished. That’s why I am trying my best to wedge my door open.
I grew up playing with building blocks. Books didn’t fit through the hole in my wall, and I came up with my own theories. Structural colors on the wings of a butterfly. I thought that I would get to not only design but also build my future self. I can’t believe I was ever that naive. Now I know how cheese gets its holes. Pressure builds up and bursts. We are social animals, and that means that others will always have a say in how we turn out.
What are you mousing about for? You aren’t a beast of burden, what you are is a newly hatched chick. Nobody would ask you to carry the weight of the sky on your shoulders. But far be it from me to get in the way of your stubbornness.
Mommy says that I am her little lifesaver. My big brother is the light of her life, but there is a heartless monster that soon will be done with the stars. I think it’s called pollution, and Mommy says that I am my big brother’s only hope.
Mommy and Daddy fight a lot. They can’t wait to get out of each other’s sight. But once upon a time they told me that I was the best part of the two of them. And I am trying my best not to let that last ember die.
Mommy says that I should make friends. That I should cherish them and be kind to them. I know that I should never take my ball and go home, but I can’t help it. It sure would be nice if once in a while we played at someone else’s expense.
Daddy says that this is part and parcel of being a big brother. He comes home late at night to put food on the table, and that only leaves me to be a good role model for my siblings. The thought of asking somebody else to cover my shift has never crossed my mind, but I just wish Daddy had read me an instruction manual instead of a fairy tale that one and only time.