The Creature That Never Changed
Read more poetry by Britt Wolfe
I once believed in metamorphosis.
In the soft miracle of shedding and renewal,
the slow undoing of what harms
to make room for what might heal.
Then I met the creature that never changed.
It shed its skin each season,
peeling back the husk of its latest performance—
the sorrow, the promise, the trembling vow—
and beneath it,
there was always the same rot.
A new skin.
The same stench.
It learned the shape of empathy,
but never its pulse.
It could mimic remorse,
but not remember it.
Its apologies gleamed
like wet teeth in the dark.
Every time it molted,
it called it growth.
Every time someone left bleeding,
it called it love.
And the world, ever hungry for redemption,
believed it.
But I have seen the truth beneath the veneer:
the marrow that does not repent,
the hunger that does not sleep,
the heart that beats only for itself.
It does not evolve.
It molts.
It discards the evidence
and keeps the appetite.
It will cleave into your spine
and drink until you mistake the thirst for devotion.
It will whisper that it is changing
while calculating how to take more.
And when you are hollowed,
when your ribs echo with emptiness,
it will move on—lighter now,
gleaming in its new disguise,
leaving only questions
and a faint metallic taste in the air.
So no,
a leopard does not change its spots.
A monster only learns
to shed more beautifully.
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