Today’s prompt is to write something from the perspective of an animal. I chose the Large Blue butterfly, recently returned from extinction in the UK. It has a grisly larval life!

I begin in the dark.

A hungry imposter, unfazed by

my bleak agenda. 

Forgettable. 

I hide behind the scent

of their children. 

They treat me as their own. 

Care for me.  Love me.

This is survival. 

Then I eat. 

By the time they

understand that I am death

it’s too late.

Change comes.

I trap myself in a

prison made from my own

skin.  In the dark again,

I float around in myself,

nothing but possibility now.

A stew of me – wondering

what to make of myself.

Alchemy.

When I emerge I am beautiful;

A piece of fallen sky with

crumpled wings,

the past nothing but a

shadow below me.