I have burnt reddish wings
And you have a pale blue-green
Like your eyes, and I remember
That time you called me beautiful
And that other time
I called you lots of bad words for
Breaking my heart for no reason

It’s kind of funny how
We both became butterflies at the same
Basic time period;
When you opened your eyes and saw
What a jerk you sometimes were
And I opened mine and saw
How blindly I’d been following you,
And we methodically concocted the hard
Outer shells around our vulnerable, morphing frames
And became like rocks or trees
Or other hard sturdy things
For a few months until we got our bearings
And could emerge as the butterflies we are

Now we’re newborns, forgetting
Slowly the things that brought us to this
Rebirthing point, testing out our
Damp, iridescent wings that tell
Stories our minds have long disposed of
And trying to be the good
Grown up butterflies we were never
Quite able to imitate well enough
When we were still caterpillars