a guide by Samah Fadil
Step 1
Forget to feed the chrysalis as it forms. Once the transformation is complete, protect the butterfly as it crawls out of its cocoon by holding on to its wings gently, for it not to fly away too quickly. Be careful as you may hurt it if you hold on too tight. Please remember not to hold on too tight. Still, you hold on too tight.
Step 2
Take the anger you’ve been holding in for generations and project it on to your newly discovered bug. Watch them as they disconnect from reality and channel their anger – your anger – mama’s anger – baba’s anger – sister – brother – grandmother – other – into a single flip flop at the park in full view where they smash a monarch perched at the side of the fence. They thought a bug had no right to sit there. No one told them that insects could be beautiful. No one said insects were deserving of love. No one said the crunch of the wings underneath the warm rubber would stick to the mind like wet cement.
Step 3
Watch in silence as they crush 50 mg of promethazine to stop the hallucinations and grind 3 grams of Afghan Kush to ease the pain. Pray as you watch them take things you don’t recognize. Recognize that you haven’t prayed in so long you’ve forgotten how. Ask for forgiveness. See the bug rushed to the hospital as words implode – fists explode – they have an episode – a violent overdose? Pray again as your family spends Eid wondering if the little insect is going to make it out alive from that self-induced coma. Even if we knew it rested best in its own cocoon even if the cocoon is a coffin of your own making.
Samah Serour Fadil is an Afro-Palestinian writer, editor and translator who resides in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal. Her words can be read in The Quarry, FIYAH, Palestine Square, Skin Deep, Ebony Tomatoes Collective and more. She was a co-organizer and performer for Global Indigenous Solidarities: A Poetry Reading, coordinated by Yale University Art Gallery, and is on the selections panel for Mizna magazine and Center for Book Arts. Fadil served as content editor for the Black SWANA issue of Mizna; winner of the Whiting Literary Magazine Prize. Her poem prongs into the nation was selected as the winner of the Petty Propolis Deconflating Surveillance with Safety poetry contest. Her debut book of micro-poems light, dark, in-between is available for order.
