Flutterby
flash fiction by Shannon Murphy
DANCED on the head of a pin. Spin and spun full of suck — all appetite and need. Please. Pass the milkweed. What MOTHER gives you grows you. Who am I? asks the ovum. Silly you! I am you — I am me, you’ll see, says the caterpillar.
NOT COMFORTABLE in my skin. My skin does not fit me. I will not be defined by this. Fall from me that which doesn’t allow me to be me to be the me that you‘ll see. Shed and shed, cast off, expelled. Exerted. Expanded. I turn myself upside down and inside out. Molt and melt. Spin and spun again to mush. Transformed. Chrysalis. Within WITHOUT within. Another undertaking. Out the pulp of puberty —
METAMORPHOSIS. BEHOLD! MY WINGS! MY COLORS. MY FLUTTER AGAINST THE BLUE BLUE SKY. I SAIL AMONG THE SUNFLOWERS. DIVE BELOW THE AZALEAS. LIGHT UPON A BLOOM TO FEAST. DRENCHED IN BEING-NESS. PULSING. RESONATING. I AM SO ALIVE IN THE WORLD! WHAT PURPOSE QUICKENS QUICKENS within me?
Without — that to which I am drawn irresistibly. Life to life to life to life… the pheromones of seduction. A perfume beyond all word-ly understanding. A memory beyond all word-ly remembering. Instinctual imperative. Grasped. Belly to belly in the air. On the ground. How long? Time does not beat within the without of this. This coupled mission. This penetration. This transference of forces and resources toward specious outcomes. The collective dance collects my will. Suspends resistance.
Monarch. Matriarch. Uncoupled. Alone but NOT ALONE. In search of the right place. Upon my choosing, my discretion, to drop what has been passed to me and churned through me. My children.
Away with me in this here and now. To the last bit of sail: sun, wind, sky. Yellow taste. Violet smell. Green touch. Joy of leaf and bloom above and below the bottomless Blue. A last sip, flutter, shudder. Enough! Done. Cease.
Shannon Murphy: “I’ve been writing forever, and only when something that I write resonates with a reader on some level, do I presume to call myself a writer.”
