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BUTTERFLY, A NOVEL’s monologue:


by Julie O'Yang


Many of you may think I can't talk but I do, excessively so and all jaws. I wonder if that's the reason I get burnt sometimes. And yes, I too have a life, hear me.
I was born on a rainy day somewhere in Asia, when a stranger bought me on the antique Bird & Flower Market near the house where she was born (she had long left that place but what's new). So it happened on that rainy day, she bought me without her knowing it. Concealed in the soft joint of a plant, I looked through my opaque, meshlike pupal casing. As I saw her passing by in her silky paces almost like a butterfly, I fell in love with her. I begged in silence that she would turn around. She did! She looked quizzically at me, not having a clue what was going to happen to her…and the rest is indeed a miracle! I entered her life, she entered mine — me still cloaked in my cocoon, disguised like a masquerade queen. In the months that followed, she would water her nameless plant on the window ledge first thing every morning. I so learnt to know her, her bedroom eyes when she woke up, her thoughts deep in the night at her writing desk, sharp and burning like a razor, the dimple of despair between her knitted eyebrows. Tears. Sigh of relief when she found those little words she said, when words mean so much to her, blank page after blank page. She never back down or shy away, she always listen to me, to her heart that get us both through those sleepless hours. But then, finally the time came. She couldn't believe it but it did. The first fiery pink flower blossomed in front of the window, I decided to leave my covert retreat and stretch my wings to meet her face-to-face for the first time. I'm not an attacus atlas. I'm queen of queens. I am a BOOK! Now I give her to you, my queen, my maker and muse, my mistress and lover. Hold her tight and dance to the beat of her heart. Give her your love give her your sins. She will whisper into your ear that one little secret, on a rainy day, the silky paces, shuffling…
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