"Don't talk to strangers " was what my mom used to tell me. She said it today too but it fell on my deaf ears. And now I can feel those words mocking at me, bit by bit.

I should have really listened to mom.

I lied to her by saying that I'm going out to play. In fact, I was heading to the old dilapidated building a few blocks away, just to have a look at it ...... alone. It was foolish.Maybe dangerous too ...I know but the rebel inside of me compelled me not to think so much about it. The darkness seemed so tempting yet so mysterious.

It was fun until my eyes fell on him.

 And there he stood. The bad man everyone talked about. With his coat creased, a fat cigar between his lips and those hungry beady eyes, he resembled the big bad wolf and me, the stupid red riding hood.

My mind screamed at me to run but I just stood there watching him walk towards me in slow calculated steps. He held out his hand and offered me some candy. I took it but didn't eat it yet. Uttering some sugary words he lured me inside, holding my hand in a tight grasp. And I don't know what happened next but the world went black. Or maybe because I was knocked out cold.

Next morning I awoke in in the attic, tied to an old stringy bed with chains. Rust particles had gathered on the bed poles, the chains, and even the door hinges. The windows seemed to be nailed shut and a weird musky odor hung in the air. I could hear him climbing the stairs,approaching closer to where I was sitting. His heavy boots scuffed the hard wooden floor in loud thumps that made my heart beat faster by every passing minute. I don't know if I was ever this scared before.  He stood at the doorway,staring at me as if I'm his new found toy.  His hands held a jug and a steel tumbler.

"Are you thirsty?" He asked gruffly. I chose to keep quiet. This seemed to annoy him. He trudged even closer and I could see him looking at me with disgust.

" I said, are you thirsty?"  He spoke louder.

I shook my head.

He placed he jug and tumbler on the small table close to the bed and sat next to me.

" Don't worry. I'll take care of you, you will make new friends. ......at the graveyard." He smirked and my heart dropped in my throat. I started to cry. He raised his hand to touch my cheek but I pushed it away. His smiled turned into an ugly sneer and he raised it again, this time higher to hit my face. I closed my eyes waiting for that stinging burn of that slap. But i felt nothing. Loud footsteps rambled along the staircase and in no time we were facing a group of angry cops, who were pointing guns at him and ordering him to surrender. He began to laugh at them and held my hand in an icy grip. No sooner one of the cops pulled the trigger and shot him down.

 Bang bang. He fell on the ground.

Soon the cops pulled away from his body and began to talk to me but I still chose to keep quiet. I kept staring at the jug. The chief carried it in his hands and looked at me.

" Wake up! " And he splashed icy cold water on my face.I woke up and found myself staring at my mom's face in confusion. I looked around and realised I was in my own bed.

I heaved a sigh of relief and wiped the sweat over my brow. No sooner did I place my feet on the floor , I regretted it . The cold jug touched my feet and I picked it up , grimacing at the blood stains on it. I looked at the clock and decided to clean it up later. So I bend down and placed it under my bed. That's when I saw it. The severed head of my captor , stinking with its own blood and looking at me with bulging eyes , a sign of astonishment. The police never came to my rescue so I had to be my own hero. Though I did wish the axe was a bit lighter to hold . I smirk at it and get ready to go to school. Tonight I'm meeting new friends at the graveyard.

They took a CAT-scan of my brain, and they told me it was mush.

“Mush?!” I exclaimed.

“Mush,” they confirmed.

“Surely it can’t actually be mush,” I insisted.

“It is indeed mush.”

“But that can’t be! How does that even work? How am I even alive??”

They shrugged. “Your brain is mush,” they declared, one last time, before I was discharged from the hospital.

I had been given absolutely zero instruction as to how to de-mush my brain. And though they didn’t say anything about my mush-brain impacting my quality of life, the knowledge that my brain had liquified into what I imagine to essentially be gray-matter mashed potato was not comforting.

I had to de-mush my brain myself, I decided.

Now, one consequence of mush-brain, I quickly discovered, was that novel ideas were entirely unattainable. Try as I might, I could not force myself to produce a single original thought.

I squeezed my eyes tight and tried to concentrate. Think, think, think! I willed myself. Then, suddenly, a thought!

From the murky recesses of my mind, an image slowly surfaced. I balled my fists and held my breath as the image became clearer-- I saw a man and a woman, relaxing on a patio under a striped awning. They seemed vaguely familiar. Then they spoke,

“We love our Sun-Setter Retractable Awning!”

Huh?

I shook my head and blinked. A commercial?! All that brain power, for a commercial?

I tried again. This time, my brain only returned snippets of this month's radio hits.

Again. I pictured a billboard for hair restoration.

I sighed, defeated. I would have to try a different approach, since it appeared thinking was getting me nowhere.

I opened up my laptop and hopped online.

“How to de-mush your brain,” I typed into the search bar. I was met with several articles about unlocking 100% of my brain, one article about mushroom soup, and one very questionable link I did not bother clicking.

I decided to phone a friend. Just because I couldn’t generate ideas didn’t mean nobody else could.

They picked up on the first ring. “Hey what’s up?”

“My brain is mush,” I stated, skipping the formalities.

“Haha yeah, I get that,”

“No, literally. My brain is literally mush.”

“Uh, I mean we all have those days-”

“I just got back from the hospital. They scanned my brain and told me it was mush but they didn’t tell me how to fix it. How do I fix it?”

“Oh! Wow you mean literally literally, not figuratively literally,” they said, finally grasping what I was trying to say.

“Yes.”

“Is that even possible?”

“Apparently so.”

The line went quiet for a second as they turned over the peculiarity of my predicament. If they had more questions regarding the medical feasibility of brain-mush, they did not ask, and for that I was grateful.

We settled on a handful of strategies to attempt to de-mush my brain. The first was acupuncture.

“Well, the idea with acupuncture is that your body doesn’t see something’s wrong,” my friend explained, “and so when they stick in the pins, that kind of signals your cells to fix things there.”

I went to acupuncture. I closed my eyes so I would not look at the pins and needles. After a couple hours, I opened them. I paid the woman and left.

Though I still couldn’t think original thoughts, I had to admit my joints felt much better.

The second plan was exercise.

“Okay so if acupuncture doesn’t work, a friend of my cousin’s is a yoga instructor. The first class is free,” they told me.

I went to my friend’s cousin’s friend’s yoga class. The studio was small, but not cramped. I focused hard on my breathing as I followed the instructor’s fluid movements. My movements were not nearly as fluid, but in the moment I felt quite spiritual. I released my breaths and let my mind wander.

My wandering mind supplied a constant stream of insurance company jingles for the duration of the class.

Our third and final plan was less of a plan and more of a joke, but by this point I was desperate. I placed one ice pack on each of my temples, and I wrapped an athletic bandage around my head to hold them in place. Opening the freezer, I pulled out a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream. I grabbed a spoon and made my way over to the bathroom.

There was a kitchen chair that I had placed in front of the sink. Before I sat down, I turned on just the cold water. I sat, shoveled several scoops of ice cream into my mouth, and threw my head back so that my hair caught the running water. I let the ice cream fully melt on the roof of my mouth before adding another bitterly cold scoop.

Several minutes passed.

I developed an excruciating headache after the third bite of ice cream, and abandoned re-solidifying my mush brain altogether.

For the next few days following my failed series of schemes, I mostly lazed about in bed, wallowing in the devastating knowledge that my brain was now, and would always be, mush. I scrolled on my phone aimlessly, the blue light of the screen the only tint to my pallor skin. When laying on my back bored me, I would roll over to first my left side, then my right. I only got up to eat and use the restroom.

On the sixth night of the sixth day of my misery, I raised my head to roll over from my left side to my right, when I noticed a peculiar dampness on my pillow. I shone my phone light over the spot, and felt bile rise up my throat.

There, staining my pillowcase, was a puddle of what seemed to be gray applesauce, if applesauce smelled like rancid meat. I felt something warm ooze down the left side of my neck, and my hand shot up to meet it. I drew it away, and to my horror found the same slimy substance stuck to my fingertips.

I booked it to the bathroom and fumbled for the light. As it clicked on, I saw my reflection staring at me in shock, gray ooze dripping from its ear-- my ear. I gripped the edge of the counter with white knuckles to keep myself from tumbling onto the floor. Taking a few deep breaths to compose myself, I reached for a towel. I ran it under warm water, and dabbed away the slime with a shudder.

Exhaustion hit me like a truck then, and I promptly curled up on the bathroom floor and fell asleep.

When I awoke the next day, I was too horrified and disgusted by the last night’s events to even return to my room, much less to grab my phone. I walked outside, trying desperately to clear my mind of the sickening memory. I walked all around town. I walked to and from the library three times. The librarian was taking a lunch break outside when I passed it on the second lap, and kindly informed me of the weekly community events.

By my third lap, it had gotten dark, and my stomach was growling instantly at me. I walked into the library and spotted a sign promising free snacks and drinks during that night’s workshop. My stomach urged me into the room behind the sign, a small common area with tables and chairs and several other library-goers. The snack table was all the way on the other side.

Before I could cross the room however, the librarian from earlier stood up at the front and asked us all to take our seats. Gazing forlornly at the plates of cookies, I reluctantly lowered myself into a chair, stomach groaning in protest.

As it turned out, the class was a creative writing workshop, and the topic of the evening was “Stream of Consciousness.” The librarian supplied us all with a pen and notebook, which were donated by the village, and asked us to bring our notebooks with us every week.

I stared blankly at my equally blank notebook, twirling my pen nervously. It had been almost a full week since my brain was pronounced mush; the last thing I needed was to be reminded of that fact. Besides, I still wasn’t sure if it was appropriate for me to grab any snacks yet. The librarian must have seen my fidgeting, because she appeared next to my table before long.

“Are you stuck, dear?” The librarian was a sweet old woman; she called everyone dear.

I nodded sheepishly. I didn’t want to have to explain to her why I was stuck.

“That’s okay now! I just wanted to remind you, that for this activity you just have to write anything that’s on your mind.”

“Anything?” I echoed.

“Anything,” she said with a nod and a smile. “It’s a great exercise to flex that brain muscle!” she laughed.

I wrote one line:

Man, am I hungry.

That was an original thought, right? Granted, it wasn’t much, but at least it wasn’t a hardware store slogan or something.

I put the nib of my pen to the paper again, but this time I closed my eyes, inhaling deeply. When I opened them again, I started scratching words into the paper, cautiously at first, and then scribbling with enthusiasm by the end of my sentence:

They took a CAT-scan of my brain, and they told me it was mush.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Thank you for reading, and for a fun challenge prompt!

email: ksurjancev.media@gmail.com

She was so disheartened and depressed. A leading archer of India was lying on the bed just before a week to the Olympics. Rita Dixit, a leading sports personality of India, met with a severe accident on the way to the airport. Her flight was about to depart when her taxi got hit by a fast-moving truck near the airport. After 18 hours, when she woke up, she saw that she was lying on a hospital bed. Soon she got to know what had happened with her. She started crying with tears rolling down her cheeks when she was informed about her broken legs. She asked if she could ever walk again, but her doctor replied negatively. She broke down from inside. She thought that her life was of no use now, but her family and friends continued to motivate her; they were very supportive. But her condition didn't improve. Her parents sent her to antidepression classes, spent quality time with her, and invited her friends to their home. But their continuous efforts made no change in her health. Then, at last, when everybody had lost hope, Rita's sister came up with a great idea. She went to her sister and told her the latest happenings and then asked her to wake up early the next morning because she was going to take her somewhere. Unwillingly, Rita said yes. The next day she took Rita to an academy of Archery for the specially-able people. When she asked her sister, why had she brought her there, she said smiling," Sister, you are a talented archer, and the whole world knows this. You cannot lose hope. This accident was your destiny. You have to move on, and start practicing for the next Paralympics. We all know you can do it. You are an inspiration for everyone. Please join this academy and start practicing. An accident cannot stop you from achieving your dream." Hearing this, Rita thought that her sister was right; a small accident cannot be claimed as a failure. She needs to move on and work hard to achieve success and fame.

She thanked her sister and said, "Thanks sister, I will surely not let you down. I will join this academy and practice hard for the next Paralympics and make my family & country proud." Rita had 3 years to practice for the Paralympics. She practiced day & night to fulfil her dream. Then finally, the day of selection for the Indian archery team for Paralympics came. By the luck and tough practice she was selected in the team. She happily went to the Paralympics. She qualified the semi-finals but her finale was with one of the best archers in the world. She was quite nervous but she soon remembered her sister's words. She thought that she should not lose hope. With great determination and willpower, she beat her opponent. When she returned to India with a gold medal, on the airport a huge crowd of people were waiting for her arrival. In the press conference, when she was asked about her success mantra, she simply said, “Never lose hope. Hope is 'HOLD ON PAIN ENDS'."

THE END

Thank you

By Tamanna

Nature was my goddess, the sun a glowing muse burning up every fiber of my being. Every breath belonged to the trees, every shiver mimicked a chilly breeze and every tear was matched by that of an empathetic sky.

I wonder how that night managed to make it anywhere close to my soul. It had been a while. In any recollection of recent memories, my optimism towards the world was nowhere to be found. Hidden away in whatever moss-covered cavern was tucked away in my head. It was alarming, I had searched for it for many years. Ducking the winds of apathy and trekking the plains of indifference. To no avail I sought out the outlook on the world I was unsure if I was even capable of having. For a billion years in the bitter vain of existence, nothing tasted sweeter to me than a graze with death. A dance with the devil in my mind was all but too common. I found solitude in dark corners I never knew I had. I wanted peace , for everything to stop, for silence , for warmth , for a solution .

I wanted shelter from the bitter war I had started in my head, a coward I ran from the fighting only to find myself lost in the mountain ranges of my mind. I was stranded in a place I thought I knew all too well. In looking for a sense of direction I found east and west indistinguishable, my moral compass lacked a north. Every bridge I found was rotted, every puddle presented me with a reflection unrecognizable to me.

I was scared. I had been wondering for so long I didn’t know if id ever find a way out. In the sky I saw my life, flashing by day after day except it wasn’t me. I was here and the outside world was an atmosphere away. If I were high enough, I could almost feel the other side, but I’d have to keep walking eventually. My feet were tired, and my hands were dirty. I was certain the only way out of my mind was out of existence. I didn’t know where I was going and at that rate I didn’t want to find out.

Their marriage was a failure in the eyes of some…well… most people. They never spoke about what they were thinking. About what they wanted. He was always gone and she was always unavailable. No one knew the reason they wed, not even them. She liked to think it was because they were both shaken trees in the middle of the storm holding each other up with broken branches. Beat up but still there for one another. Those words were even in her vows. She meant them. He kept his thoughts to himself. He didn’t mean to. They shared a bed, but she liked the couch more. She couldn’t handle the whispering in their room. She thought it was the ghost of their love trying to sneak back into their hearts, at least into hers. “Why should I let you in? I don’t want to get hurt again,” she said to the spirit of what was once something good, something healthy.

A cold, harsh wind swept through the window, and she felt something eerily familiar. She loathed that feeling. Just as quietly as that breeze swept past her face, so did memories of sleepless nights and strange sensations of grief and guilt. Suppressed, but just like her, somehow, someway, still living and breathing misery. She rose from her place on the couch and stumbled over to her room, not quite awake. She went there for something, she knew it. She never goes in there to sleep. Not anymore. The whispers returned, and breathed an utterance of importance into her ear. A burst of energy awoke in her and she began to look through every drawer and every cabinet in her solemn chamber. “Fortitude,” brushed past the back of her eyes like Bunny’s blue ribbon and through her ears like a soft lullaby to a newborn child. Swiftly and carelessly, she ran to their backyard, to Fortitude, the little shed they built when they first married. It was more like she sat in the background reading a book aloud as he hammered and drilled scraps of wood and metal together. It held.

Her favorite books were stashed in the little shack, and his most beloved records were hidden somewhere in it, too. She wasn’t looking for any of that. She scrambled around the shed and rearranged and dismantled every cabinet in it to find what she knew would make the whispers leave, to find what they were leading her to.

The letters were buried under a mess of pipes and garbage. He must have left it there before he left. She shook at the sight of it, and considered leaving it all there, and staying with the miserable memories that plagued her every so often, but leaving those wretched reminders there. She even considered breaking Fortitude back to the scraps she came from. As she leaned out of the doorway, a wave of tears engulfed her. Quickly, she turned and braced herself to tear away at the trash in front of her to get to the treasure. She shook the dirt and junk off the notebook of papers and pictures and sat unknowingly in the filth.

“Are you still afraid of the dark?” She began to laugh as she read, with tears in her eyes, the first line of the letter he had written her all those years ago. “Of course I am,” she started “but you always protected me from it.” “It’s ok if you are,” the letter read, “I am too. Not because I don’t know what’s there, but because I don’t know what’s missing.” Her laugh faded and a frown took its place. “I don’t know if you’ll leave. Then I’m afraid of the sun. I get scared that when it rises and shines through our window the next morning, your smile won’t shine along with it.” “It did” she commenced. “It will. Just come back!” she let out as tears began to stream down her rose colored cheeks. “But then I think of the memories we made, and I’m not afraid anymore,” she read aloud. “But I am,” she answered. “I’m not afraid because you’re always in my mind. Your name is always on my tongue. I’m not afraid because I know you’ll always live as long as I don’t forget. So don’t forget me, and I’ll always live.” She held on to that part, and she kept Fortitude in place.

On the wall above my desk is an arrangement of post-it notes, messy writing scrawled across colorful quilts of paper, quotes I’ve collected from my past few years of reading. Like the ticking of a clock, caught up in life I often forget this collection exists, but once in a while I look up and my dear Willy Shakespeare, Wilde, and Faulkner whisper to me from the uncrossed t’s and undotted i’s. I amuse myself observing my literary progression, noting a change in tone from Fitzgerald to Remarque and Hesse and Tolstoy, and back to America with Morrison, Ellison, and Steinbeck.

I stare at quotes from Beloved and Invisible Man: novels that undoubtedly shaped me as a person, and while their musings on individuality and hope and prejudice sing to me, there is a distinct disconnect. A glass wall better left untouched.

I live in Carmel Valley, arguably one of the most sheltered places in the world. I have always lived with a roof over my head, with enough financial comfort for that roof to be located in safe neighborhoods, in communities where the greatest concerns of families are their getting their children to college. Yes, I am Korean American, but I go to school with many others and my race has never been called into question. I feel like an imposter, so proudly displaying the liberation of scars that aren’t my own, associating with characters that I can not truly understand. How can I rave against social injustice when I myself am a passive contributor?

I close my eyes and I am there. My dad stands next to me, and the back of our shirts are darkened with sweat stains. It’s not the inescapable assault of the sun that beats down from above, it’s the smothering humidity of the soupy air that makes you want to crawl into your skin to create more space to just breathe.

It is the fourth day of the World Championships for my taekwondo association, conveniently hosted in downtown Little Rock every summer. We thought we would spare some money by opting out of renting a car for our trip, thus explaining our setting at the bus station. And though we aren’t strangers to public transit, it was never my main form of transportation, and it’s been a few decades since my dad was a commuter in Korea.

I stare at the flimsy metro card, the edges soggy from the sweat of my fingertips. Numbered circles line the top of the card - for marking our rides, the attendant told us when handing them over - a system I had only seen before when redeeming frozen yogurt. I check my phone and I am surprised to notice only a minute has passed. Looking around, I notice the bus station is nearly deserted, with a few people sleeping on benches or next to shopping carts scattered across the station.

A breath of relief escapes me when I hear the wheels of our bus turning the curb. The doors open and the scent of gasoline and a trace of the distinct “school-bus” odor immediately engulf me. My dad looks on with slight impatience as two men board. Perhaps it is from my background in taekwondo and Krav Maga, but I can’t help but notice the sag of one of their back pockets and the black handle of a Bedlam knife. Something turns in my stomach.

We board the bus. All conversation immediately stops. The silence hangs in the air as my father hands his metrocard over to the driver and instructs me to do the same. I must have followed suit, because I find myself seated next to my dad with the card in my hand. The hole is frayed because the paper is completely soaked through.

I take a hesitant glance around the bus, careful not to turn my head with my inspection. There are three people across the aisle from us, seated on the scratchy plastic seats reminiscent of the white folding tables used in school field events. From the rustles in the back I conclude there are at least four more behind us. There are two exits, doors in the front and the back - the windows will suffice in an emergency. In what feels like a fabricated stillness I hear the whirl of a fan, but the air is even thicker than it was outside, a different kind of density, suffocating and ubiquitous.

Five stops in, a sizeable black man boards the bus, dully observes the passengers, and takes a seat next to me without greeting.

I fix my eyes on the shriveled end of a cigarette butt on the floor. A wave of rigidity sweeps through my body: I feel my muscles tighten as if a Victorian seamstress was threading the sinews through the last loop of her whalebone corset. I feel the weight of the man’s gaze scanning my brand-new red t-shirt: the printed text obnoxiously reads “I am a World Champion”, which must scream “I am a tourist and I have money” . He takes a breath and my arm stiffens.

I’m definitely not racist, I assure myself. It’s because they are poor and could be dangerous. The saddening implication of this fails to dawn on me in this moment. I don’t consider Hesse’s disdain for the bourgeoisie, or Ellison’s disparagement of the ostentatious, feckless whites, or the countless school essays I have written analyzing social class and prejudice. I am certain everyone in the bus can hear my tell-tale heart beating out of my chest - my blatant privilege is my vulture eye and I will be found under the wooden planks here in a bus in the middle of a foreign city. I must have stayed like this for hours.

My dad nudges my leg. We have reached our stop. I note that his leg was not tapping during the entire ride, a microexpression that I’ve grown familiar with throughout the years. We get up, my heart pounding through my veins as my passing legs graze the knees of my silent boarder.

Only when I turn from the aisle towards the bus doors do I count five people sitting in the back seat, their dark eyes unreadable but their gaze heavy and concentrated. I rush out of the bus.

I hear the swoosh of the doors close behind me, the moan of the bus rebounding on its hind wheels, and the smooth rumble as it departs. I let out a breath that I didn’t know I had been holding.

email: cjung1254@gmail.com

An made observation prior to COVID-19. (Originally Published on 22/March/2019 at thebusybarbee.com/wonder)

I woke up this morning to find myself in my living room facing the window.

I had fallen asleep on the couch.

Wondering what time it was, I slowly rose from the couch and looked around the room.

My arm felt stiff.

I must have woken my dog, who was in his crate in the bedroom (he is incredibly intelligent and listens to everything).

He knew that I was awake and it was, indeed, time for his walk.

I opened the door and let him out.

He was eager to go out.

Feeling rushed, and still very sleepy, I searched for a cigarette. Luckily, I soon spotted my pack and lighter on the counter.

I slipped on my shoes and coat, clicked the leash to Jack’s collar, and off we went.

He enjoys the courtyard, and following his tug on the leash, we headed left.

He did his business fairly quickly, but since the weather was apparently nice today, he wanted to stop and sniff every tree and bush we passed.

I didn’t mind, the sun felt nice.

It must have been around noon because there were few cars in the parking lot.

I could see another dog being walked in the distance.

Turning the corner to head back, I happened to notice something bright on the sidewalk close to my building.

Fearing another piece of candy or trash that would entice Jack, I kept him close.

As we approached the colorful object, I realized that it was a Monarch butterfly.

A huge fan of butterflies, I retracted the leash and slowly bent down to get a closer look.

It appeared to be wiggling but its wings seemed to be twisted around its torso.

Oh no, I thought. How did that happen?

I felt compelled to move it before anything else could happen to the poor beautiful thing.

I delicately scooped the butterfly up and we continued to walk.

Standing in front of my stair-well, the butterfly cupped in my palm, I admired its black and yellow markings.

It’s legs were moving slowly but it still seemed alive as its wings began to twitch.

The wind started to blow and I looked around for a safe place; unfortunately, the leaves on many of the trees did not seem to have a good place to nestle the butterfly.

The first tree that I tried seemed to push the butterfly out.

Catching it as it fell into the grass, I sighed.

Deciding on a bush close to the stairs, a passerby seemed to slow down and gave me a puzzled look.

Feeling their stare, I remarked, “Some kid must have smashed this poor butterfly,” and as I delicately placed the butterfly in the bush, I added, “Yeah, I am that person”.

My dog and I proceeded to walk up the steps and I began to reflect on what just happened.

I thought, do people not stop to help butterflies, anymore?

It made me think about kindness and the nature of things.

Don’t tell me why, but this really resonated with me as I found myself still thinking about it as I made my coffee and began my day.

It still sticks with me.

Did the butterfly simply fall, was it sick, deformed or maliciously harmed?

What, also, is it about the symbolism of the monarch that is so striking?

I thought about my mother, a wonderfully brilliant woman, and how she raised caterpillars that she had found on her cilantro plants.

After feeding and sheltering them, she observed the life cycle and freed them after they hatched.

I thought about our day-trips, when I would visit from college, to the Houston Science Museum to see their garden and how gentle they were landing on my dress and in my hair.

Magical and sweet memories.

I also found myself wondering about the butterfly effect and the monarch project—a different connotation.

One less understood or even spoken of.

Whether it was a sign, an inspiration, an irony, or just a bug that met someone’s shoe, I am happy to have crossed paths with the butterfly today.

I am that person and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

I hope that you will be that person, too.

yours truly,