i knelt in front of a dead butterfly and prayed

a while ago, i buried a butterfly,

kowtowed in front of a temple, and 

pretended like i knew how to pray.

finger joints aching from the cold,

crescent moons branded into my knuckles,

i begged guanyin for a new life and

sacrificed the ashes of my family photos to her

wailing candles.  

using her bitter saké as a disinfectant,  

i drank bottoms-up to cleanse my throat of broken glass and

dead nymphalidae—

sat on my knees and

waited for the

reset. 

i killed my past lives by felling them with 

paperweights and violin strings.

strange, how

those butterfly bodies had my face.

i want to bury them and

bleed the stardust from their wings so they

don’t look pretty anymore.

like a broken proboscis wound into sickly

vocal cords, crushed thoraxes

screaming with a voice that sounds like

my own, i drop the butterfly as it

stings my palm,

disgusting.

so i pray, again.

kami-sama,

how do i do i forget my own face? how do i stop these

repulsive pieridae from cursing my tomorrow?

i tried to suture the infested splits in my throat, but they only close with 

concrete tears and self love, no worries

i just have to reinvent myself until

i'm worthy of such things.

i coughed out a million fluttering ghosts yesterday.

damn those naive little things; i shot them down one by one until they

pooled by my ankles.

please, can someone lay me down in front of that church

and exorcise these butterflies from my body,

so that i can forget who i was yesterday?

stupid, there are chrysalides hanging in the cracks of my psyche.

if they were maggots instead, then

i wouldn’t grieve—

i wouldn’t grieve for a dead childhood.

my throat is closed up with butterflies and

i’m sorry, mom, dad;

i can’t remember why you love me.

i pour baijiu over my wounds again and

light an incense stick.

o’ bohdisattva, 

save me from my own demons;

it seems that my body is in dire need of a 

revision. 

gods don’t listen to those who don’t believe.

i guess you aren’t supposed to ask them to love you when

you can’t do it yourself.

a butterfly scalds my fingertip and just like that

their bodies stack in my bedroom, looking like torn up

mourning clothes. it

hurts to look at them and it hurts to

think back to what could’ve been and it hurts to imagine that

i could've been better.

so for the last time, i close my eyes and

clasp my hands together.

o’ beautiful future

why do you keep killing butterflies? and how do i become

something you won’t regret? 

of course, there was no answer, so my body wrote their own instructions.

so maybe i could finally breathe without dying the walls of my house

red.

these butterflies,

one day i’ll send them fluttering away. 

o’ future self

don’t hold your breath;

i want to pick you apart until

i’m satisfied.

hold open your mouth and

let the butterflies fly out.

then, i promise that i'll

grow you into something i can finally be

proud of.