Butterfly Guard’s Epic
Designing; alcoholic smells of markers, eraser shavings, and vibrant mistakes that fill up the page. The negative space is overcome by the beauty of her runway dress, his ‘40s suit, their foreign lives. The person on the page is luxurious, something most of us will never come to understand. They will never see the people who create them. Their hardworking hands that always seem calloused and shedding on the tips of their creative fingers. Their brain overworked and tired after a long day of work. For a high school student, artistry is not a priority, they’ve been conditioned by rulers and degrees. Homework and tests at the forefront of their mind cloud the sequin and dress forms. The future —salary— is always on the line. But for a brief moment, the seventeen year old student leads a life without money or borders, at one with her dreams and culture. The girl sees herself in a world where she is liberated from the people who hold her back, her physical limitations. Her feeling, unexplainable, maybe even controversial, forms a textile, unique and unaffordable. For once she will have something for herself, in her own world. She creates a portal to her new world through her sketchbook. Figures made in her image look alien, the contorted fabric that drapes on them defies what reality allows. Each design femine, expensive, and simple. Dozens of portals, a never ending list. She can’t possibly fit all her worlds into one book. The designer must now decide for herself which portals she opens. She sets her eye on the butterfly. She rarely embroiders, but she has already reached summer, and her closet is destitute of the wind only the monarch can bring. She opens the portal that it guards, and is suprised by the music. As she longs to create, she starts to listen to it; the energy, the fairytale, the guitar she has only heard in the butterfly’s fourth song. The voice is feminine and powerful. She feels the soft, textured linen and lays it flat against the floor. Gravity bruises her knees whenever she asks it to help her to the ground. There, where she lost her tomato pincushion for the fifth time that day, she continues her pattern drafting until the moon appears in the left window. The next morning, she cuts with dull blades, smelling the tiny frayed threads that match her fingers. She sews and sews to create two pieces of the same beige song. The sewing machine can only take so much, she convinces it to work with each seam. They look and feel as if she wrapped herself tightly in a blanket of summer weeds. She could show off her creation now with a walk to the park with her beloved now, just a few minutes away. Hopes high as she puts her converse on. Even though most are tucked away in their cocoons, she wishes all would look her way. Her beloved and her would bask in the sun as they smell the grass and asphalt. But that walk would have to wait for the butterfly’s approval. It would not let her leave until her mark was placed on her chest, engraved so well that not even the washing machine could tear them apart. After a couple days, the girl sees that the butterfly added it’s wings to the bodice so she could walk freely to gather eyes as she walked up the hill. She honors each thread that pulls her body in a close embrace, forgetting about the flies and spiders that once bothered her as she made this trip to the park. All she hears is the music of the butterfly, playing its eleven songs in her ear. She no longer needs to enter this world through a page. She no longer needs to ask permission of the butterfly to hear it’s music. She no longer needs to measure her time so she can come back to reality. While she wears the dress she embodies the world, she can wonder and roam within its environment. Time is not a bother to her anymore. After weeks of planning, cutting, and creating, one portal is closed as she hangs her outfit in the right side of the closet. The memories of wiping blood off of her pricked thumb and the smell of the linen split between the scissor blades will remain in each stitch as she ages and moves along.