Let go, my dear

The coffee burps as the water filters through, droplets echoing within the cup. Stillness settles against the walls with a low hum. Veronica tucks one side of her cardigan over the other, and wraps her arm underneath her chest while the other rests on top. A yawn escapes. 

A heaviness stretches beneath her ribcage, climbing the ridges of her lungs and dipping into the pit of her stomach. She knows this stranger well. It began visiting early this year, but ever since Veronica moved into her new home, the masked shadow has become a frequent guest. Veronica allows it. She promised herself that every emotion is welcome, staying faithful to her therapist’s reassurance that not everything needs a label. Yet, after living with this stranger for hours that bled into days, a needle of resentment sparks a painful realization. She bites into her avocado toast. The feeling remains an immovable object with a giant arrow hovering above it—it no longer wants to co-exist; it demands to be acknowledged. It wants to be dissected and left scattered across the floor. Its desperation presses against the inside of her skin, like a butterfly trying to tear through its shell and be left to dry as its wings grow.

Veronica’s thoughts loop around the chrysalis. It’s been festering as the only observation truly capturing this irritation poking at her, and for the first time, she’s not overrun with the urge to change herself or scurry to find distractions. She stops beneath the doorframe. Outside, the spring breeze and distant bird chirping stir the quiet house. She finally recognizes the truth: this dormant feeling is no longer anchored. Five years of pulling at its roots and shifting internal boulders have worked. It has, at last, loosened. Yet, her exhausted body is too numb to register the missing weight. 

‘But what are you?’ Veronica mutters as she kicks one box into the room and drops the final cardboard container next to it.

She stands with hands on hips, scanning her office. Two desks occupy the corner by the window, offering a view of the garden, while a small reading nook sits adjacent to her favorite feature—the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. The dark wood still smells faintly of protective oil, and below them, open cabinets reveal neat dividers, waiting for her to start organising. The sharp chime of a bell cuts through the quiet, followed by the lazy scratching of nails against the wooden floorboards. Turning toward the door, a smile breaks across her face as her cat bursts into the room, dashes past her, and leaps triumphantly into an empty cardboard box. 

‘Chessy-’ She kneels next to her ‘-You have an entire bed to yourself.’ She smooches the top of her head. ‘My silly girl.’

Soon, her dog trails in with a yawn, grass stuck to the hair of his paws, and halts next to her. She kisses the side of his snout, only to pull away when a wet tongue strikes her cheek.

‘Toast!’ She chuckles, wiping the spit with her shoulder.

Veronica rises after massaging Toast’s ears. Understanding that affection won't lead to a shared nap, he retreats to his bed next to the chair. 

She pats the side of her legs, ‘Right,’ she says, and goes to open the windows, shifting the mesh screen in place. She meets Chessy’s eyes, her tail wagging devilishly, and points at her with as stern a gaze as she could muster.

The shelves sparkle with the reflection of livelihood from so many stories and characters she’s read and has yet to read. Veronica managed three boxes before the heaviness blossomed from the pulsing depth of her heart. It’s alive, she observes—the chrysalis has been opened completely, but the butterfly remains tucked, as if waiting for her permission. Her instinct is to pinch it and nudge it out as she’s done in the past with things she needed to work through. But a whisper of utter gentleness murmurs in her ear. Between organising and throwing away paper wrappings, Veronica peeks over her shoulder to find solitude, or Toast biting the edges of the box. Her movement gradually slows, a slight tremble vibrating through her fingers, and her breathing deepens.

Visualise. Her therapist always offered it during her sessions. Speak to it.

Veronica curls her fingers around an unequal number of books that bordered a small safety hazard for her joints, and nudges them into the dedicated space next to the flower lamp curled over a sandalwood candle, and one half of the elephant sculpture pillared to hold them up. Her eyes flutter at her thoughts painting the scene:

She walks into the conservatory that has grown with each step she took to unlearn patterns and choose things that serve her happiness. She’s proud of it, and within the sanctuary she finds it easier to process and move without guilt. Expect this exact butterfly refusing to let go. She must’ve done something right for it to finally crawl out and finish exerting fluids into its crumpled wings. Unlike the memories or feelings she can easily name, this presence resolutely keeps her at arm’s length. Her attempts to yield to it—to coexist peacefully on whatever terms it demands—are rejected as unworthy, forcing her back to square one, completely consumed by it. Veronica stops before the open chrysalis. Within it sits a winged canvas of muted chestnut and bronze, its dotted amber eyes shining as though caught in sunlight, framed by an outline of damp soil clinging to the smooth ridges. She cocks her head and gently scoops the discarded shell onto her fingertips. Nothing seems wrong. Yet the butterfly shifts an inch, hesitant, its proboscis curled around a strange cord—disconnected from the insect, but still tied deeply to the inside of the shell. 

Veronica’s eyes open to Chessy staring back at her from between her knees. She sat down at some point, her legs burning with a numbness of an hour’s steep uphill hike. 

‘Butterflies don’t have umbilical cords.’ Chessy purrs as if understanding, and the knowingness of it rattles her.

Three deep breaths. She wiggles her toes, sighing as deep fatigue ripples through her body. This depletion is no longer a surprise; it happens almost every day. She fights it constantly, but by noon, a sudden wave of exhaustion overpowers her, collapsing her onto the bed. Veronica hums while Chessy leans into her touch. She can from here before tackling the books again, she wonders, and her body agrees in haste. 

‘Right.’ She scoops Chessy up and slides forward, kissing her neck and putting her aside. She hooks her fingers into the torn chunk caused by a certain orange feline and drags the box closer. Her spine straightens. She must stay focused; her legal documents and bank statements are hidden among these files. 

‘Coffee,’ she whispers, looking at her cat. ‘Tea? Yes, tea.’

She rises and drags her index finger between both pets, promising to be quick—and she is. The spot she just left still holds a trace of warmth. Placing her cup in the narrow gap between the shelves and the cabinets, she grabs a pillow and sits down. Her movements turn rhythmic. She stretches one leg out straight, then the other, until both are extended, with Toast settling into the space right behind her. Her tea has long since finished by the time she reaches for the final stack of files and pushes the empty box aside. Chessy immediately pounces as the box slides across the floor. Veronica laughs, feeling the playfulness lift the weight and tension from her limbs. 

‘Last bit,’ she groans.

A cramp shoots through the side of her hand, and her pinky and ring finger loosen instinctively, something slipping from confinement and falling onto her lap. Like dumping ice water over her head, her heart sinks. Veronica doesn’t remember putting this picture in any file, let alone having it in possession from her parents’ many binders of childhood photographs. In the reflection, nurses encircle the bed, two clutching her mother’s hands while gazing on in quiet awe. Nearby, a doctor holds baby Veronica under the blaring white light, assisted by another nurse. But her focus is captured entirely by the center—drawn like gravity to the umbilical cord. 

Veronica’s senses circle the lifeline resting across the baby’s stomach and hanging to where she rested for nine months. Within seconds, she’s in front of the chrysalis—no! She’s standing on the edge. Veronica gasps. Her gaze drops to her fingers curled around the disconnected umbilical cord, and following its path, she stares across a landscape of memories stretching as far as she’s been alive. The heaviness that has been embroidering itself for the last two months and breathed its own consciousness snarls viciously. It snaps like a cornered canine seizing the opportunity to spring through the open gate, growling and biting at anything in its way. But there’s a whine, a softness pleading to be followed. Veronica trembles. Her mind averts obedience. It’s unsafe. It’s dangerous. 

Oh, but her heart lulls her forward. It’s okay.

‘I can’t,’ Veronica whimpers.

Her grasp tightens. Five years of deterioration, yet she still can't let go of the lifeline. To lose it is to lose every deep-rooted connection to her family—a bond born from a single cord. But as she watches the hound, reality sets in: the final step is to follow it and leave the swaddle of her past behind. She hesitates. Not because she is a coward, but because she is a daughter. A sister. Two titles that haven’t been true since she was five. 

Inside, she is still the child who wants to call for her father when the darkness closes in. She is the little girl chasing the breeze of freedom, blindly following her brother's bike down crooked, sun-dappled roads. She is the child who curled into her mother's arms before she learned of the suffocating reality of her disappointments and pain, and of their enmeshment. Veronica wanted to erase her past, but her hopeful inner child keeps clawing backward, using simpler times to survive a brutal present. She writhes as she burns every bridge. Deep down, she knows that cutting this final umbilical cord crumbles any chance of reconciliation. It eliminates any route her parents could take to fix what they ruined, and she isn't ready to cement that finality.

Staring at the umbilical cord, her reasons fade against a sudden realization. Though she severed her physical connection and watched the wooden debris drift downriver, that path allowed her younger self to find her. Like tracing a piece of red string, little Veronica followed the umbilical cord until she found her, offering a shared safety allowing both to let go. She craves the naivety of her younger self. Unbound, the child runs wild, lacking the heavy armor Veronica carries at twenty-six: the quiet exhaustion of an adult and the fragile burden of a child aching to be enough. It was foolish to believe her hunger for freedom had changed. The fierce, sharp-toothed beast that once ruled was just little Veronica, running with the very courage she lost in adulthood and keeping her passion alive. Now, as a thank-you for staying, she is called to run with her arms spread. She’s asked to run bravely without guilt. Veronica releases the cord, leaps, and follows. 

Toast’s sudden bark jolts her around. Gasping, she moves onto her knees and stares out the window. A vibrant flurry of white and yellow butterflies weaves through the air. She knew the warming weather would bring them out, but she never expected their flight path to lead right past her home. Veronica smiles. A tenderness emerges from the depths at which the heaviness has submerged, and she breathes easier. The picture of the day of her birth is placed on top of the cabinet; she’ll return it to her parents when she goes to see them again sometime in the distant future.