we both lived in a world that granted a curse upon women that wore skin a hue darker than the ones that seeped frost cotton like dolls made out of rice
my mother called me beautiful, but the butterflies that danced in the bitter air of this land hissed, "be like me, be like me...like them"
so i ate them, and wore their wings like a second skin. scales surfaced onto the fibers of my arms and cherubic face until they overlapped into tiny pieces of chitin that mimicked the mane that once coated my swarthy body, transforming myself into a butterfly of the Hesperiidae as my mother cried and held my peels with the ends of my hair sheathed around her wrists
with no shame or sight, my hunger lingered and i swallowed more of them, and created my own toxin from the greed of my desires
