Birds of Paradise by Anne Malcom

He collected beautiful things.
Rare things.
Ripped them out of their natural environment and preserved them in all of their dead splendor.
The problem was I wasn’t beautiful. I was all of the hideous and ugly realities of the world packaged into one broken human being.
He came to kill me.
That was his business.
Death.
He ripped me out of my natural environment, the prison I’d created, and locked me away with all of his beautiful dead things.
I hated him.
I still hate him.
But if I was given the choice and the ability to leave this cage, come back to life, I’d stay dead.
In all of my hideous splendor.
Because my murderer can only possess dead things.
And I can only be possessed by someone more broken and ugly than me.