Illustrated by Paheli/OutWrite
They say moths are like ugly butterflies
Maybe I internalized that
It was all too easy to inhabit that perspective
when I grew up around butterflies
Vibrant and beautiful,
I envied and admired their ability to fly
openly during the day
while I spent mine trying to camouflage
with the tree bark
It was easy to paint her as the archetype
of one of those beautiful butterflies,
Capturing my attention with her gleaming colors,
her skillful flight, her vivacious charm,
while I was a pesky, fuzzy moth
Her wings dainty, smooth, and bright
Mine stocky, furry, and drab
It was easy to compare our pain
Though it was never fair
He wanted to capture her because she was beautiful
and he wanted to keep her
He wanted to capture me because I was ugly
and he wanted to destroy me
We didn’t trust each other because
she thought I would try and keep her
I thought she would try and destroy me
But I didn’t have his net
She didn’t have his weapons
I grieve the time I spent blind
Her wings as paper thin as mine
To expect her to hold me, to save me,
was never fair
when she was just learning to fly again
To compare my wispy fluttering,
straight out of the cocoon, to his greed
was never fair either
I grieve her stolen time
she should have been flying,
But now that she can fly again,
I don’t want to watch anymore
I avert my eyes,
the flapping wings mute to my ears
It’s enough to know that she can,
but I don’t need to see or hear it
Knowing that was not only what I craved
but what I wanted to be,
Will it always be so painful?
I grieve the time I spent
absorbing their definition of beauty,
Assuming mine lay in my proximity to butterflies,
But it’s the season to accept our differences
She will never understand my reality
But that doesn’t mean that she never cared
We’re both flying away
We’re not the same
The comparison was never fair
Credits:
Author: Paheli (She/Her)
Artist: Paheli (She/Her)
Copy Editors: Min Kim (She/Her), Bella (She/They)