E. Butterfly

by Ellis Brewer

Note from the Editors: An excerpted version of "E. Butterfly" first appeared in the 24th volume of Flies, Cockroaches, & Poets (Chicanx Writers and Artists Association, 2024). If viewing on a mobile device, formatting for this piece is best viewed in landscape mode.

Egg//Chrysalis 

They call it “cracking the egg” for a reason. 

“Egg” is a slang term for a person who is probably trans but doesn’t know it yet. When I allow myself to remember those first painful realizations, I understand why they coined the term. I remember my life before I knew, but it felt like somebody else was living it. I took dinner with a degree of dissociation. My name sounded alien to me every time. I remember discovering there could be a different way of existing—and that others had done it before. The happiest moments were the realization that I had never been alone in feeling that something was not 

quite 

right. 

But the egg is in a sheltered state of existence. It is a place where I don’t have to think about why the word “girl” feels so wrong every time. If I can live with the discomfort of this claustrophobic, cramped space, I will not have to consider the dangers outside. 

The jagged edges of the egg’s broken shell can be unforgiving. Sometimes, on the way out, they scrape our faces, our hands, and our legs as we tear through to escape. But even this is a beautiful sort of pain because we know we are breaking through to a new life where, little by little, we can start to feel okay. 

It makes sense why they call it “cracking the egg,” but when I thought about it longer, I wondered if there might be a better term. 

The bravery of acknowledgment is monumental, and the decision to become comfortable is titanic. It is akin to the grueling work of a caterpillar when it knows it must change: making, inhabiting, then painstakingly undoing its own chrysalis.

Chrysalis means new life. It is a transformation that begins when everything inside of you is dissolved down to the very goo of your being. From there, you can find what you will become. Calling it “cracking the egg” implies you are hatching into a life just barely starting, implying you were never alive before. 

And sometimes, 

it feels that way. 

Although even butterflies first hatch from an egg, the Chrysalis is a thousand times closer to the experience. It is a tireless and artful effort. Emerging is choosing to step into the form you knew you belonged in and inhabit the world in a new way. 

You existed before, but not like this…. and somehow, now you see everything from a different point of view. 

Gender Soup 

Did you know? Inside a butterfly’s Chrysalis, they actually digest themselves. After releasing an acidic digestive fluid, the caterpillar melts itself down into a “tissue cell soup.” A week later, a butterfly will emerge. 

As I look in the bathroom mirror at my soft jaw and un-flat chest, I wish to do the same. I speak in my lowest voice, and still, it is not enough for anyone to mistake me for anything but a woman. I hide my features, and still, it is not enough to lower the amount of “ma’ams” said to me by customer service. 

If I could melt this body into a sinewy soup, they wouldn’t know what to call me at all. Even so, all the things I have ever feared about telling the truth swirl in my mind like their digestive acids. Maybe I am my own kind of Chrysalis.

The Slough of the Unholy Chrysalis 

Deep in my darkness, I wonder: I would rather rot to death

How must it feel Inside my cell with 

To be at home Its soft, dark walls 

In the body you were born with? Than make any more false prayers 

I hear that home is a chosen place To that faraway Goddess

But I don’t remember Of a Womanhood 

Choosing the blueprint I do not 

For my own prison cell. And have never known. 

I built these new walls Why should I pray when 

Dripping with corrosive I don’t have a say

To melt the iron bars In what my features 

And the words of the angry. Will tell the ones looking?

Those people banging Bibles Who knows what these windows, 

Say that God Walls, and doors 

Will never love me: Will say to them 

“Blasphemer of the holy.” Without my permission? 

That I am not at home Yet, I have to let myself

Is a curse at my creator, Hope that someday, 

An inversion of nature, These soft angles 

A defiance of most evil. Will no longer give me away.

Their passages and verses Hope that the harsh steeple-points

Swirl around me Will dissolve back 

In my darkness Into the dark 

Until I cannot breathe. Unable to touch me. 

Hope that these walls will unfold. Hope that this prison will transform.

For now, they work to hide me When my body becomes 

As I allow the acid to A temple at last 

Melt away my layers I vow to devote 

Freeing the thoughts I kept contained: Myself to worshiping. 

My body is not a temple. Until then, cover every mirror 

Furthest from holy, So I can believe 

These grounds That this place will 

Have never been hallowed. Unfold into something sacred.

Formation 

Before I had the words to describe what was happening inside, I was already beginning to take shape. The walls I had so carefully constructed were starting to constrict me. When I was young, I behaved as much like a boy as was possible for me to do. I climbed and fell and rolled in mud and fought with sticks that were swords. For all I did, it was never enough because I could never be as “all boy” as people expect a boy to behave. I could yell and punch and have a thousand dirt clod wars, but at some point in the day, all I wanted to do was play with Barbies. 

Some part of my nature always knew it did not want to be contained. 

Before I had even the forethought to break through the Chrysalis walls, my sloshing inner understandings had begun forming into a new shape. Someday, I would have the words to describe what was happening. 

First Crack 

When I reached the age of self-discovery, I met someone new. 

In trying to flatten my chest for a harmless costume, I looked up and saw a different person reflected in my bathroom mirror instead of the character I had expected. By now, I do not even watch the show anymore, but the person I saw in the mirror consumed me. 

Unfortunately, I liked what I saw, and the image burrowed beneath my flesh to nest. For the rest of the day, I had to ward myself away from mirrors—from gazing at the newness of my reflection. Something beneath my skin was starting to form, a layer that refused to stay small and unnoticeable. 

At once, it was the happiest and most terrifying day of my life.

How could I move on from them now? Something in their eyes made me unbearably happy. I trembled with excitement and fear. This person, whom I hadn’t meant to meet, was suddenly giving me a new story to tell those outsiders who assume so much. Beneath the skin and further, beneath even that strange new layer, something fluttered. 

The butterflies breaking out from the Chrysalis of my chest have begun to hurt my ribs. I ache with the beauty of being seen and the sacrifices made to twist my body into looking the way I want it to. 

At the end of the day, I cried when I took off the makeshift chest binder; it was like returning to some reality that I could never help but feel wrong in. Once again, I knew anyone would be able to know my shape and infer things about me from it. The more time I spent with the new reflection, the more I realized that I never had a chance. There are so many terrible things that give me away; it feels like just by walking down the street, I am shouting to the world to call me a woman. 

Maybe I am. And why should I reveal my true self when so many only ever loved the lie? I am selfish, though. I want to live as myself. 

Since then, I have spent hours wondering if my life would have been easier if I had never met that person in the reflection. After all, it was an accident. How was I to know? The shuddering of wings urges me toward a new future. I am frozen with fear. 

Outside 

I’ve learned the truth of my reality. It has been proven to me in so many ways—I know I am not a woman. Every time I am reminded, I can feel the truth striking into the deepest parts of my being—but even so, it is easier to believe in the lies I used to tell myself.

Yes. It is simpler to live in this fantasy, in the safety of the insulated world I created for myself out of necessity, where I could be surrounded by impenetrable walls enclosed by secrets. When I met the person in the reflection, it was the first large crack in the thin walls surrounding me, and when I tried to take a look, more of the wall crumbled. It became impossible to reseal my enclosure around me, and remaining sheltered by the falsities had become much 

too 

painful. 

Now, I can’t remember how to fit in with the people I used to talk to. Sometimes, I can barely perceive their forms; I feel so far away. And I realize I am far above, looking down, unable to reach them. I hope somebody joins me soon. 

It is lonely here. 

Unclassifiable 

“Are you a girl or a boy?” 

I am barely conscious, blinking into a sun I haven’t seen in days. My wings are still folded close to my body as I dangle from my branch, and still, the questions fly. What am I? I want to laugh in their faces; even I am not sure of that. The glare of so many examining eyes makes it difficult to move, though. They want to understand me—or, more accurately, they want to know how they should treat me. But the joke’s on them. I am neither. And both. And everything at once. 

Knowing they will always struggle to classify me, I feel almost powerful. Careful, testing the waters, I give a slow and tentative flap.

Unfolding 

I listen for the sound 

Of my name and new selfhood,

On the tongues of the ones 

Who have known me the longest. 

Somehow, it is their acknowledgment

That heals me the most. 

Different sounds 

For a different person. 

Yet, I still hear myself 

Being called. 

Do new syllables lead a different life?