The Memoir Of Ms. Butterfly

I was born into battle

a world that tested me, a love that constrained me,  

but never a force strong enough to stop me.  

She raised me to believe,  

to press my feet into the earth and call it my own,  

but still, in her mind,  

I am a shadow of what I have already become.  

I do not wait for permission to rise.  

I do not shrink to fit into the past.  

I am a woman,  

etched by survival,  

formed by my own hands.  

Ms. Butterfly Genesis