She Was A Moth That Waited For The Light To Find Her. And When She Died It Was Dark As Always.

I want to change.

You can.

But I am afraid.

You ought to be.

I can't change.

Yes you can.

My legs are shaking. My feet are stuck in the ground.

Unstick them. Walk. Move. Change. Now!

Now?

Now.

Why is it whenever I am alone I slip my hand beneath my black wool jacket and find any wound I can and open it again, to bleed, to bleed. Is it really my destiny to bask in life so little and ruminate on the scarcity for the rest of it? Is my stomach shrunken and my heart empty, am I a vessel that cannot be filled and can only watch as others are?

Futureless moth, eating old keepsakes. Nothing else to be done in locked closets but eat. Soothing herself on the past, indulgently gorging on memorabilia, unbothered by the holes her little mouth leaves. No better meal than childhood. No better place to die than in wools, and silks, and cottons, refusing to batter oneself against the closet door.

I watch the climate crisis march to my doorstep, and

invite itself into my living room.

The blaze is outrageous, but not nearly as much as his friend, the politician.

He insists the fire isn’t here, that my brown felt couches have always been black and crackling,

That the water from my kitchen faucet has always been boiling from its spout.

I watch my world turn to ashes, and the fire take its leave, and the politician smiles with heavy pockets.

Insisting he wasn’t paid to let him in in the first place.

The girl I was and the woman I am reconcile in tides. Coursing warm waves and biting cold foam, dancing in circles. Becoming one another, and abandoning one’s self in permanence.

Fairies are a gentle sort, no bigger than pointer fingers. A little fire sprite burned the tip of mine once. She wasn’t sorry about it neither, she just snickered and gave me a thimble to wear over its ugly little boil. I sort of admired that unapologetic way she had about her. Her nature wasn’t wrong after all, she didn’t burn me out of hatred or malice. She burned because she was fire.

Splinter my dream into a web of cracks and gaps.

Take what little splash of anticipation I have pestering my rancorous mind and freeze it, immobilize me.

Take me where you want to go.

My cat didn’t like me much. I saved his life when he wasn’t more than two days old, but I never was his favorite person. He’d meow at me all angry like whenever I got near him, so I left him be. He’d let me pet him once in a blue moon and I treasured that. But he got sick. The sort of sick you don’t get better from. And even though he avoided me most of his life, and I respected his wishes, deep down he remembered what I did for him. His last days alive he came and sat with me. Maybe asking me again, save me. I know you can. You did it before. And with everything in me I wish I could have. I would have saved him a thousand times over even if it meant he stayed in rooms I wasn’t in, and preferred people other than me. I would give everything for him to dislike me a lifetime’s worth. But I only got four years.

Everything is fine.

Do you actually believe that or do you just want to believe it?

Is there a difference?

I cling to the anchor because I think the ship will drown me.

I crave the familiarity of the salt water over the cold whipping of the air.

Because I would rather drown than change, I would rather stay stuck in the same place for the rest of my life than breath the air of tomorrow.