Luna has butterflies above her bed. Real butterflies – not real butterflies – illusions. Pretty illusions, and they look like butterflies. Luna thinks of them as butterflies. Are they butterflies?
She likes that word. Butterflies. It feels smooth and creamy in her mouth, and it makes her body feel whole, like it's all holding on to the rest of it, every cell and every atom and every particle and all. Luna's butterflies (are they butterflies?) flap, and Luna does, too. She wonders – are her hands alive? They feel, certainly, and joy races through her body in colourful streaks, pink and orange and yellow and red just like the sunset, and there's blue and purple too, and she feels all warm, like the sun has breathed on her skin – not blown, not hurt, but breathed, with just enough force to tickle, but not infuriatingly like nails dragged slowly, softly, across her skin.
Luna has aliveness in her soul, floating dreamily as do the butterflies. It gurgles like a stream running over rocks, and wears anger down to tiny grains of sand, and pushes the sand into the shell of a mollusc, and when the sand emerges, it's a pearl.
Luna has pearl earings, and pearl necklaces, and pearl bracelets. The bracelets are her favourites, and she loves the word bracelets too. It feels so good! The pearls do, too.
Luna hears everything. Sometimes she thinks she hears too much. The birds chatter, and Luna could never live in the city (where would the aliveness go? Luna doesn't know). She is down one shoe, and cries for it every night as she falls asleep – is it sad? Does it miss her? Is it lonely, wherever it is? Has something terrible happened to it? Luna misses it, and, she is sure, her shoe misses Luna too.
Luna is eclectic, and Luna is all put together. Luna's hands flutter, sometimes, and sometimes they are wringing themselves, squeezing themselves apart. Themselves themselves themselves themselves themselves – run the words in Luna's head. Coiling around her head and poking out of her mouth; laughing, leaping, and Luna lets them loose. Themselves themselves themselves themselves themselves themselves. Ha!
Luna's hands, she thinks, are dancing their joy out into the world. No energy can be lost – no energy will be lost! It's all in the system, and Luna lets it run free and wild. Keeping your emotions all locked up, Luna knows, is bad for you.
So the butterflies pull Luna's emotions into the air, and so and so and so
Luna is as Luna is. Luni, Loony Luna.
Luna flaps her hands.
Luna flaps her hands.
Luna flaps her hands.
Luna flaps her hands.
Butterflies!