A schoolgirl, if you will,
in a fluid dress with fluent hair,
long, she’s probably blond
if we’re being honest,
and the dress is yellow too.
She hopes it is bright enough
to distort her vision.

She leaps in the rain,
but the water beads right
off her skin
long as she keeps her eyes down.

Moths swarm and settle
in her hair, mistaking it
for some sort of sunsilk.

It is the silk of her cocoon.

When she comes out
later, she sheds it all
with scissors.

Soon as the silk breaks
the water spills into her
but her lungs barely even whimper;
she has suffocated before,
and it hasn’t killed her yet.
People are waterproof;
water beads on skin.
It’s the dress they want her in
that makes the rain so public
and clingy.

But all the moths have drowned.
She kneels down,
bare knees on the concrete,
and picks up a wing
and lets it drifts to the ground.
Limp, listless flight,
more gentle than ever
the moths were in life.

The girl now
stomps on the wing,
scolding herself under her breath
just quiet enough to forget
that she is alive.
Like a knife she twists her heel
and rips the waterlogged wing
into fractals of nothing.
She knows there are some things
she should never find beautiful,
like death,
or girls.

The sun catches her fallen hair.
With fingers that boil
it offers her molten gold
as compensation for the world.