Becoming the Butterfly

Aanya Ebrahim

Description

You do not just snap your fingers one day and become the butterfly. It takes time, patience and self-growth. This book is a journey, a mosaic made from little fragments of my heart and soul, pieces of my intentions, hopes and dreams. It’s been divided into four sections; The Caterpillar, The Cocoon, Metamorphosis and The Butterfly. I’ve filled each one up with pieces of poetry, tales from my own life and stories that have reached me through word of mouth, recollections of days that have felt like storms and others that have felt like summer. Rants and ramblings of my perceptions of the world, facts and truths of (my) life, and letters of all the things I want to say - cryptically addressed to all the people I want to say them to. For quite a while, this book has held me. And now, it is yours to make your own. I hope that somewhere in between these pages, you feel less alone. And I hope you become the most beautiful butterfly.

Sujets

• Poetry

Informations

• Publié par: Partridge Publishing India
• Date de parution: 10 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781543708844
• Langue: English

Extrait

BECOMING THE Butterfly
 
 
a mosaic of little fragments of the human heart and soul
 
 
Aanya Ebrahim
 
 

 
Copyright © 2022 by Aanya Ebrahim.
 
ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-5437-0885-1

eBook
978-1-5437-0884-4

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
 
 
 
 
www.partridgepublishing.com/india
Contents
Introduction
I Wish I Wrote the Way I Thought
The Caterpillar
Three Feet
Five Fingers
Wonderment
Educate Your Daughters
Girl with The Golden Eyes
My Neighbour’s Child
The King is Born
Firebug
Ingénue
Six
Minor Fret
Story Time
The Hill Trip
Birdcage
My Grandmother’s Kitchen
Little Man
Blurry
The Playroom
Scrutiny
Kids in The Lawn
Confetti
Virgo
Golden Child
Hiraeth
Oak Tree
The Cocoon
Compliments
Heart Rate Machine
Overkill
Impostorism
This Poem
Apartheid is Over
Encyclopaedia
Empowered
Haiku
Tedium
Terminal Two
Postprandial Somnolence
Tuesday
Take Five
Narcosis
Saturninity
Every Story that Ends in Sadness
I.
II.
III.
Zero Hour
Anticipation
The Binary
Butterfly Ribs
Squadron
Dollar Store
Metamorphosis
Cacti
Stupefy
Lento
The Amalgamation
Night Number Thirteen
Greyhound
Quote Box
The Bell Jar
Moths and Butterflies
Asphodel
Newspaper Bias
Waiting for When
Asura
Grade Point Average
Weep like Willows
Choice Time
Confinement
Witch-Hunt
What They Don’t Teach You in School
The Argonauts

Buck Fever
Searching
How to Seem Enthusiastic but Not Desperate
Broccoli Soup
The Butterfly
Logolepsy
You are A Monsoon
Give this Girl A Rose
Kalopsia
I Am Indian
Make this Board Secret
Spitfire
La Verdad
Solstice
I Think that Would Be Nice
She

A Verse
Listen
Ode to The Moment
Effective Communication
Writing in The Dark
You are A Home
Shark Week
Feste The Fool
Abrazo
Do Me A Favour
A Place is in Its People
Poetry
Whisper
Acknowledgements
For the wonderful people that I live with,
Mama, Papa, and Myra.

Introduction
Sometimes the world as you know it just decides to become something else.
~ Veera Hiranandani, The Night Diary
When I was ten years old, I sat at the back of my dad’s car and decided to write a book. I had this neon-pink notebook that said ‘A little notebook for big ideas’, and I was ready to fill every page. I remember coming up with the title ‘The Outback Adventure’. It was going to be about four kids who got lost on Fraser Island and discovered a little pocket in time, where a secret society of lost children lived. I planned to end it by letting the readers know that they’d fallen down a large trench and gone to a haven for lost souls (died, essentially), which is what this supposed secret society actually was. Cheery, I know. It lasted about two pages, and I never finished it. Nevertheless, when I was eleven years old, I wrote a five-hundred-word piece for a collaborative book called The Dot That Went for a Walk . I remember revelling in that little glimpse of glory. There was no better feeling than being published and at the Royal Opera House, in Bombay, for the book launch. After that, I began to work on lots of short stories, worked with newspapers, and did programmes with magazines across the globe and the internet. When I was thirteen, I decided to take a crack at the whole book thing again, which ended up being a bit of a stretch. I fabricated this elaborate plot involving Twitter wars, serial bombings, family secrets, illicit affairs, neuroscientific epiphanies, and whatnot. It was to be called ‘Killer Queen’—well, to be fair, I was really into mystery at the time (thank you, Karen McManus). Again, never wrote it. An entire book always seemed like too much.
The summer after the seventh grade (amidst a global pandemic), I took a cardboard box and painted it. I wrote ‘POETRY BOX’ on it with a marker and set out to fill it up. I tore papers out from notebooks and snatched up loose sheets of colour paper; I even wrote some poems on tissues and napkins. I would go for a walk and write a poem. Call a friend and write a poem. Bake a pineapple upside-down cake and write a poem. The Poetry Box became my creative outlet. From there, I wrote to newspapers for available publishings and would turn to poetry when I had nowhere else to go. It’s indescribable; the exhilaration that buzzes through me as I write these words, as I write this book (at last).
I’ve always liked words. I’ve always liked to debate and have had a long-standing affinity towards learning the art of language. I write music and admire poetic lyricism (Phoebe Bridgers, Gracie Abrams, León). Amidst my teenage years, I’m learning that the gift that language is can so easily be turned into a weapon. Words can hurt, terribly. They can warp the insides of your mind, hurt your heart, and even make you delusional with the right pinch of persuasion—but only if you let them. In reality, writing, especially writing poetry, is just a variation of manipulating this giant cacophony of words that exist around us, this balderdash. But I like to give words the power that they deserve. This may not always work in my favour, but I believe that words, if made to be potent enough, have the ability to move mountains.
I’m inherently a very emotional person, so it gets intense sometimes. I feel immense love, excitement, and faith, but I feel hurt just as intensely. It is as though my heart is incessantly leaking blood and sprouting flowers at the same time. I believe that being vulnerable about your feelings makes life all the more colourful. So, in times of doubt or strife, I find comfort in words; I hope you find comfort in mine.
In recent years, I’ve noticed that reputation has suddenly become so important (fellow Swifties, I see you). I don’t know if it’s just a phase, but it feels as though your reputation is your everything. It’s all about the picture that you paint of yourself, of the influence, of the luxury. Our generation spends so much time online that it gets hard to remember what’s truly real and what isn’t—the lines blur. And, in all honesty, I definitely have given a lot of thought to how I am seen . I, too, am guilty of giving ‘image’ too much importance. But we must remember that a butterfly cannot see its wings. The ‘appearance’ of a butterfly’s wings is of no actual importance to the butterfly, or to any of the other butterflies because they’re all busy with the bigger picture, with their bustling about. That’s the thing: you are not what other people make you out to be. You write that book all by yourself.

I Wish I Wrote the Way I Thought
I wish I wrote the way I thought;
Obsessively,
Incessantly,
With maddening hunger.
I’d write to the point of suffocation.
I’d write myself into nervous breakdowns,
Manuscripts spiralling out like tentacles into an abysmal nothing.
And I’d write about you a lot more than I should.
—Benedict Smith

The Caterpillar
You’re never too old, too wacky, too wild, to pick up a book and read to a child.
~ Dr Seuss
Growing up, my favourite book in the world was The Hungry Caterpillar (apart from The Giving Tree , of course). Now that I think about it, maybe I didn’t like it just for its vibrant graphics and compelling storyline. Maybe I liked it because I was, in some sense, the caterpillar. We’ve all been caterpillars; maybe some of us still are.
To be a child is one of the most magnificent experiences. It’s a time of just play, a time when someone bigger brings something brighter down into your little hands, when imagination is not yet hallucination, a time of innocence and unawareness and simple existence in this presumably big bad world. My five-year-old cousin is the perfect embodiment of the essence of childhood. She’s a fierce little one, very sure of herself, and unbothered by others’ opinions. My sister, still figuring out life as an eleven-year-old, gives me the best advice. She says it as it is and focuses my lenses effortlessly.
I remember being a little caterpillar: an eight-month-old widening my eyes at everything, a two-year-old hiding behind my mother’s statuesque figure, a six-year-old forcing my little sister to sing backing vocals as I serenaded my family with off-key Disney numbers and fully rehearsed choreographies. I remember running free and wild until it was time for bed. I remember having no prejudice or inhibitions. If only we could capture that carefree purity infinitely.
T hree F eet
The ambrosian scent of day-old rain still fleets around the air,
The aureate sun filters through the sombre nebulae,
As I tip acr