A cockroach — grotesque figure.
Lurid. Spindly legs.
Appalling. Feared by many.

To **** this filthy thing is, to most, an act of mercy.
You crush it, and they applaud.
Thus are you named savior — though it was only your comfort you served.

If the same were done to a butterfly —
delicate thing of silk and light,
its wings praised like stained glass in motion —
its death would birth mourning.

And you —
you would be called a villain.

But when you crush the cockroach,
black-bodied, oil-slick, crawling through shadow,
the world does not flinch.

They applaud you.
Call it clean.

One dies in a pool of sorrow.
The other dies in silence.

And still, both only sought the same thing — life.

One spoke in beauty.
The other in ugliness.

But neither asked to be born.
Neither chose their shape.

See the difference?

You **** what offends your eye,
and call yourself righteous.

One death earns flowers.
The other earns nothing.

Perhaps this is the story:
That mercy is given to the pretty,
and the ugly are buried without names.

It does not bite.
It does not chase.
It only exists —
and for that, you spill its blood.

Who, then, is the beast?