[Certain]

Brian Bryan, your verse was clearly the better of the two. I thought you made a big risk by going off rhyme so early, and it definitely jammed up the flow to start a bit. I prefer to do something like that midway through a verse, particularly when I'm riding one rhyme heavily. But I think it worked here, at least on my second read. The butterfly metaphor wasn't new or clever, but you had good reason to use it and pulled it off seamlessly. In 16 lines, you told a full story. That's solid writing.

MMLP's verse had the similar off-rhyme start, but it didn't work. Most of his verse didn't, from schematic or content perspectives. I don't even know why he agreed to write to that image if he disliked it so much.