A cockroach crawls,
legs skittering over cracked tile.
Your shoe lands heavy
no hesitation, no thought.
The world blinks, unmoved.
No one mourns a creature
with a hardened shell
and dirty feet.
But a butterfly
its wings like fragile stained glass
if it meets the same fate,
the world gasps.
You pause,
staring at the smear of color,
calling it tragedy,
as though beauty alone
earns the right to be missed.
Both lives small,
both hearts beating
yet one repels,
the other enchants.
Morality shaped by the softness of wings,
the shine of colors in flight.
We judge worth by what pleases the eye,
not by the weight of breath.
We choose which lives to hold sacred,
which deaths to brush aside,
and call it justice.
But justice is blind
only to the ones we choose not to see.
