I die of embarrassment.
My thin skin stretches, to the hollows of self-plight. If I had smiled a little more genuinely, curated the right words out of my foamy, fragrant mouth, copied their spirits down to the T, I would have shame less brutal and unforgiving than the Gates of Hell!
But no, I had to smile a little more crookedly, perhaps showing a bit of yellowing teeth, perhaps I had been too awkward, maybe they’d have accepted my form if I had leaned into theirs a bit. So I keep dying, and dying, and dying all the same. I don’t just socialise – I survive plights. There is nothing as dramatic and damning as a stranger’s passing remark. Their approval hangs on high beams, and the light suffocates. None of my kind escapes the light. We welcome it. We were moths born from it, bathed in it, molded from it, and so the Light is a language we speak fluently. The Light is a code we do not break. The Light is a dream we chase, chase, and keep chasing.
For none leave the Light, unless one sees it for what it is, and when that happens, life would still go on – the Light unharmed, a tower of adoration.
But it would mark a new beginning.
The thinly-stretched skin would stretch beyond the bones, baring the depths, and not a shred of shame would bleed. My foamy mouth would leak not fragrance, but thought – simmered, boiled, served. My Light would glow from within, not without. My truth would flower from the heart, not from high beams.
And yet the moth… the moth would stay. For the moth is never to be blamed for seeking light.
Light.
What a word, and worlds within this word.
Choose wiser, little moth.
The Inky Blue 