For What Are Butterflies Without Their Wings
Troy Onyango
“The next morning, at first crack of dawn, in the clear container where you had kept your treasure. I found three wingless butterflies. Your thumb and forefinger had traces of white powder; traces of murder.
You slept, peacefully, the sound of air moving in and out of your nostrils, filling Mother’s room with wheezing sounds. I cried, for what are butterflies without their wings? The horror of it all. This was the first time you made me cry, brother. But definitely not the last.”
Troy Onyango’s For What Are Butterflies Without Their Wings is a collection of 12 short stories that have a quickening pulse and pages crackling with sharp observations and gentle revelations about solitude, loneliness, connection, loss, love, and the infinite intricacies of daily human life.
In these beautiful stories that straddle the breadth of Kenya, Troy’s characters navigate the daily lived experiences that shape them, as they learn to cobble together an existence alongside a society with rules that do not quite fit.
Troy Onyango is a writer from Kisumu, Kenya. His work has been published in Prairie Schooner, Doek!, Wasafiri, Isele Magazine, The Johannesburg Review of Books, AFREADA, Nairobi Noir, Dgëku Magazine, Caine Prize Anthology (Redemption Song & Other Stories), and Transition, among others. The winner of the inaugural Nyanza Literary Festival Prize and first runner-up in the Black Letter Media Competition, he has also been shortlisted for the Caine Prize, the Short Story Day Africa Prize, the Brittle Paper Awards, the Miles Morland Foundation Writing Scholarship, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. He is the founder and editor-in-chief of Lolwe.
