MOTH

He spread his wings slowly and closed them again. It was his way of refreshing his thoughts and realigning his concentration. But nothing could help him shake off the intense thoughts of Sylvia, and all the others he hadn’t seen in a long time.

He hid in thick darkness, tentatively finding forms. One of his feelers worked better than the other, it had been disfigured by the rain a long time ago affecting his balance, occasionally he would fly into walls but that didn’t bother him much anymore. In the darkness his memories took on a burning clarity, from the blankness everything crept out and disturbed him from the verge of his mind. In the daylight everything was opposite, it was so bright, but like looking through a diamond everything became more beautiful but more distorted.

He decided after a long time that he wasn’t going to live in the light anymore. It wasn’t good for him. When he lived in the light, with his family and Sylvia, they were dazzling and mystifying days. Sometimes they would fly during the day (which as a rule moths should never do). They would fly out into the sky, feeling shocked at the vastness of everything around them, and further up they’d go until they were only flecks in each other’s eyes. There he would look out at the wide sky feeling anchored to everything below him.

From time to time he would find himself awkwardly struggling on his back, humiliated, legs in the air, his thin wings struggling beneath the weight of his anxious movements. Sometimes he would just give up and lay there, wings unwillingly kissing the ground, feeling beyond everything his heart pounding in his head.

When he was young he would venture out of this room through the network of opens spaces and keyholes, walking over sleeping flesh, over thighs, breasts, cheeks, over lips and through forests of hair. He felt unified with the landscape of this creature, nestled in the hair, he became a part of the human.