A Butterfly in Red Dust
This personal essay was submitted to The Wild Muse Prize in 2025 and was awarded Second Place. You can listen to a podcast where I discuss this entry with host and judge Gabriela Blandy here:
Nothing prepared me for how cold it would be in the desert. I am in the Valley of the Winds at Kata Tjuta; the clue is in the name. A biting gust gnaws at my bones, and I’m not properly dressed for the occasion. Naively, I thought that being in the middle of the Australian Outback, it would be blisteringly hot.
They say it is darkest before the dawn. It is true; the stars have disappeared from view. It is still an hour until sunrise, and shadows creep around the dunes like ghosts hovering over lonely graves. It is difficult to comprehend the enormous emptiness of it all. And it seems I am not the only one struggling with fierce winds and arctic temperatures. There is not a single insect scurrying, no reptiles scuttling, and no symphony of birds starting to sing and welcome the day. There is no life, nothing at all.
My eyes begin to attune to the dark, and I plod across soft sand. I think about how these grains under my feet shift and drift in the wind. Nothing stays the same forever. The impermanence of this landscape, yet it has stood here for thousands of years. I think about the transience of life, how we are merely a speck in this desert of time.
*
It’s six months earlier. I pick up the phone.
‘This is the Traffic Police.’
‘Oh. Has my car been nicked?’
It’s as if a howling gale slams into me. Dad. On his way to the bowls club. Hit by a car. Air ambulance. Head injury. Multiple broken bones. Died instantly. Nothing they could do.
A tornado has sucked the life out of our family.
Could I tell Mum?
I put my head against the frosted glass of the office wall and sink to the floor. She’d only landed from London two days before. Minutes feel like hours as I search the streets of the Melbourne suburb where I’m seconded for work. Peering into coffee shops, over to the marina, pausing at the tram stop.
Nope, not there.
It is then I spot her crossing the road. She is exploring on her own, her face taking in the warmth of the sun on this January day. I hesitate.
Just give her a few more moments of happiness.
She looks very pleased with herself, having walked three blocks to get a box of cornflakes, and is about to book an appointment with a hairdresser. All this excited chatter about her adventure comes tumbling out, and I wonder at what point to tell her the news.
‘Aren’t you supposed to be at work?’
I hold Mum’s hand. I feel as though my words are spoken in slow motion, as if someone else is saying them. Her mouth falls open, frozen in time. Nothing comes out. I have just destroyed her world.
We are lost in a desert, treading on shifting sands in this dark landscape of grief.
*
In this vast nothingness, there is silence. As night becomes twilight, there is a glimpse of colour for the first time. The earth is a fine brick-red dust, and pitted terracotta rocks tower over me. They crowd around me as if joining me graveside. They seem to cry the thick, sooty tears that don't seem to come in my near-constant state of numb.
At last, the sun peers over one of the domes; rays begin to thaw me. The wind drops to a whisper of breeze, and the spinifex grass sways like a graceful ballerina, beckoning me over with the longest of limbs. I perch on a rock and sit in the stillness. In this unforgiving place, I spot a hardy, single plant sprouting from the boulder beside me. Its sunshine-yellow flowers remind me of dandelions back home. A crack in the earth has let the water in.
It is only now that tears flow. A release. For the first time in a long time, I feel a sense of peace. It still doesn’t seem possible that he isn’t here anymore. With my eyes shut, vivid reds, oranges, and yellows fill my vision. These hues reflect both my current landscape and match the roses that adorned his coffin. It is in this moment I feel Dad is standing beside me.
Something makes me open my eyes and look up.
Spiralling before me is a magnificent monarch butterfly flickering like a flame in the brilliant light. It, too, is dressed in the same colours as the funeral flowers, flashing its striking black and white markings like blinking eyes with every slow wingbeat. It appears to be watching me.
*
Like a caterpillar inside a chrysalis, it takes me a while to rebuild and rearrange atoms into new life. Chemicals dissolve the larva's muscles and organs, leaving behind only the most vital life-supporting cells. Barely existing, it's just about hanging on. Surviving, not thriving. But in the shadows, the insect's new body and wings are forming. Although the building blocks remain, the very molecules that made you are being dismantled. Your whole mind, body, and spirit are in disarray. A part of the old you has forever withered and died, too.
I think of the monarch's previous existence. It doesn’t know what it is destined to become. And we don’t know how this experience of grief will shape us. But it will transform us. How can life ever be the same again? We don't know how long we will feel as desolate as the desert, but there is healing happening beneath the surface. A metamorphosis is occurring. Even in the desperate darkness, there is life. And in time, we will find that glitter. It's the faintest shimmer of butterfly wings.
