Becoming the Butterfly: A Mosaic of Little Fragments of the Human Heart and Soul

By Aanya Ebrahim

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.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Partridge Publishing India
• Release date: Oct 10, 2022
• ISBN: 9781543708844

Book preview

Copyright © 2022 by Aanya Ebrahim.

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

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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

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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.

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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.