Moths. One, two, three, twelve. I pause my midnight walk to observe them. They cluster and swarm the street lamp, casting tiny shadows onto the pavement below. I am unsure of what it is that they seek; maybe warmth, or light, or a familiarity to something in nature that they know only through instinct. Or maybe they seek safety in numbers. God knows how many predators they face. A stray cat lurking in the darkness. A nocturnal bird circling high above, waiting to devour the winged pests whole. I shiver at the thought. Brutal, but such is nature. Without food, like the moths, the birds and cats will starve, and populations will dwindle, and so on for the predators that hunt them. Even the greatest beasts rely wholly on this delicate food web. The survival of a great bear can be traced down to the success of a few microbes. Without the littlest and often least impressive participants, there would be no life to speak of at all. It’s fascinating, really— sort of like an intricate and vastly complex game of Jenga.

I turn my gaze to the dark, faceless windows in the houses near me and think: maybe the human psyche can be compared. After all, I believe it can be widely agreed upon that human beings are very complex things. What with all our politics, and game shows, and favorite brands of socks. So much goes into creating a person. But at the core of us all, we are just atoms and molecules, strung together in a million little building blocks of DNA that give rise to cells, tissues, and organs. Nearly 100 billion cells make up the human brain. These little things are responsible for how you perceive life. I am able to think these thoughts because of them, and am able to eat, speak, and breathe because of them. All good things; I should thank them sometime.

I sit then, feeling a bit woozy. Ah, for these cells can be responsible for bad things as well, can’t they? For instance, a chemical imbalance. A few cells stop doing their jobs and then— boom! The whole system is affected. You stop exercising. You eat and sleep too much, or too little. You withdraw from friends and family. You stop caring about your favorite brand of socks. You begin to drink too much. You may even stand on the edge of a bridge and find that jumping seems appealing.

Truly odd, isn’t it? How important the little things in a big system can be. Imagine what would happen if all the bugs in the world decided one day to stop being bugs, and to just drop dead. The chaos it would bring!

Test it out for yourself. Gather some friends and set up a game of Jenga, and then slap away all the pieces at the bottom of the tower before you begin. There will be no game to play, no tower at all, for it has nothing to stand on.

Really, I think, we are quite delicate creatures living in an equally delicate world. To exist is to be fragile. To become sentient you must realize that you can break, and will. You will live and then die. Presently there is no way around that. You will die because something small inside of you will break, and that break will grow, like a crack in a windshield. Like an unstable tower of blocks. Or maybe if you are a bug, you will just be eaten.

Ah, if only the moths could understand my thoughts. Perhaps they would be quite enlightened. I fancy they might say, “Stop with this nonsense, and go have another drink.” But I would retort, “Oh moths! Have you not thought of giving all of this up? This endless game of Jenga? You must grow weary of it!” They do not respond. They continue fluttering about, bouncing off of street lights as they do.

So I sigh, and burp, feeling quite unenlightened, and resume my walk.

Your life has been a series of misfortunes, mostly attributed to the people you have met.
Today I asked you what sorts of people you would have met instead, if you’d had a choice.

You said you’d like reliability and stability.

You are neither of these things.

“Hypocrite,” I thought.

I’m sure you expect those things of me. Or maybe you don’t. Maybe you expect me to disappoint you like everyone else.

I wish I could tell you that I’d be different. But I won’t. I’ve already tried to be many times.

I’ve taken who I am and changed it, tweaked it, molded and sculpted it to fit your design. It never worked. If anything, it made you dislike me more— as if you could sense my attempted deceit.

I’ve learned, over time, that I will never be what you want me to be.

Grabbed my clothes, packed a bag, and threw away your empty promises.

In my haste, I left my dearest possession. The pieces of it, anyways. Whatever, you can keep it. There’s nothing in it that you haven’t already taken from me.

Don’t try to return it. You’ll never see me again.

Or, well, what was on the other side of it.

For a long time I couldn’t see you. I could never run fast enough to catch up.

Sometimes I would sit on the side of the road, rest. Contemplate what it would be like to
finally
reach you.
                          I would dream about it as I slept among the thorns. It was easy enough to pretend that they were you.

-

Sometimes I think I catch a glimpse of you— way out there, mingling with the waves of the hills, like a mirage— vague, dimly seen at first.

It makes me happy.

-

I wasn’t quick enough. Too slow, always.

You must have grown inpatient with me.

                     I miss you. The distance craves your touch. I wonder what that feels like…

I call out to you. Every night, I swear. Cars come and go, but their shadows never look as good as yours did.

I’m still running. I don’t know why. I have no destination.

Did I ever?

-

I look for your face in the windows. How I imagine it, anyways.

-

Smoke out a window. Melancholy chords, fading away. Impermanence.

             An apparition— seen and gone.

It was something small. In an effort to persuade me you said:
“I barely ever ask you for anything!”
Later you revealed that you felt bad, and that you didn’t mean it threateningly.
I chose my words carefully in my reply.
“I know you didn’t mean it that way.”
Because you didn’t. You never do. But it happens anyways. You are unaware of it, I think.
You’re unaware of how much you ask of me everyday.
Just by being you. Just by being us.
In every stinging word, you ask of me to ignore the hurt, because that’s easier than changing.
In asking me to bear the weight of who you are, and what you plan to do with yourself.
By asking me to be someone I’m not, to be someone that fits you.
“I barely ever ask you for anything.”
Not intentionally, lover, but in my life I’ve never felt so obligated.

I’m still so in love with you.
Every harsh word is a bite, sinking deep,
injecting venom into my veins.
You’re so beautiful.
I think I’d do anything for you.
Every coil is suffocating,
but what a comforting embrace it is.
I think I’d die for you.
You squeeze tighter.

And so I do.

I am an animal in a cage with false walls,
ones that don’t reveal the intention behind them until it is too late.
I felt so comforted in it, darling. It was everything I thought I had been looking for.
Even when the facade faltered on occasion I looked passed it because oh, love.
You would never force me to stay.
You don’t have to.

Because now it is too late.

I love you so much,
I love everything I wish you were.
I see your smile— innocent, shining,
I remember your soul,
dull.
I close my eyes and think of all we could be,
If you weren’t you, and I weren’t me.

"I like to come out to this pond in the middle of the night, because I’ve found, through trial and error, that it is one of the quietest places in this town at midnight.

And, you know, when I lean over the railing and I look down into the water, it seems dark, and cold, and deep. Like if I look too long I’ll fall in, and the fall will never end.

But then I look up. I look up and I see the city lights, and the passing cars. I see the stars, and I think of all of the endless planets and galaxies hidden in the black sky above me. It makes me realize how much is really out there.

Sometimes all you have to do is look up.”

Life moves so fast sometimes. Or all of the time. I often find it hard to keep up. Like if I slow down or stop, everything and everyone I know will leave me behind. Things that can't keep up are left in the past.

But sometimes I find time to pause. When I do, I often find myself looking up at the sky. Not during the day, of course, all that blue in front of me feels like drowning. I look at the sky at night, watching the stars above me: soft, twinkling lights betraying their fiery and ferocious reality. It fascinates me that humans have spent ages finding patterns and shapes in these distant ***** of gas. How is it that things that are so far apart can still appear close enough to connect with one another? Sometimes humans are this way, I think. And look, here I am. Ascribing meaning to distant ***** of gas. I am no different than anyone else.

But what is the harm? When I found myself at a small pond in the middle of town one night with him, he spoke of the stars in much of the same way. I don't think I will ever forget what he said that night, about the water and the night sky, even though I know one day I will forget about him.

Life might move fast, too fast, but memories like that one cling forever, unchanging and blissfully immobile.

I know the name. I tasted it the first time I looked into your eyes, the sensation lingering even in the arms of another. I felt it to the depth of my being as I gasped under your fingers and lips and tongue, finally. I heard it in the words you spoke to me that night, your outline shivering, illuminated in moonlight, on the surface of the water. I began to know it the last time I held you.

I know it intimately now. I curl up with it every night as I close my eyes. I reach for it in the mornings in place of you. It whispers your name when I’m happy, sad, drunk. It lives inside of me, gnawing at my heart and picking at my brain. And oh god, it hurts. It hurts. It hurts. I’ve begged a thousand times to an empty heaven to be free of it.

“What is it, girl? This thing that tears at you so?”

Its name is Longing. And I bear its weight everyday.

He came one day, and suddenly vibrant reds collided with brilliant orange, warming the heavens and filling her vision. He kissed her pink, injecting a soft sweetness into the flaming sky. She fell into him, encased in his swirling indigo's, brushing her skin and giving her goosebumps.
It was bliss.
She opened her eyes, then, and startled to see him far from her, his dazzling light embracing the peaks in the distance and running over the fields ahead. She felt cold without his touch.
Was it all a dream?
She ran to him. Chased the shadows he left, in the hopes that they would lead to him. They evaded her, skipping beneath the trees and hiding behind the hills that undulate across the land, like waves on a frozen sea.
How long she ran, no one knows. She barreled through dark forests filled with thorns that slashed her face. She crossed frigid rivers that numbed the deepest parts of her. She screamed his name as she trekked grasslands that threatened to crush her under their seeming infinity. She pursued him like a sailor drunk on the song of a siren, unaware of his fate.
Through it all she held close the memory of the light he once gave her. Through this she found the strength to go on.
Onlookers watched, saddened by the spectacle she had made of herself.

“O, pity,” they say, “for the girl that runs endlessly, chasing a thing that will forever elude her.”