which one was i, the meddlesome moth or the bumbling butterfly
was i instinctively drawn, to an open flame, on a lonely night
or, caught in intricately, meticulously, woven spider’s web
how could i avoid either fate, all men are dumb and succumb, as did i
both end the same, in death, only one is fast, the other slow
how sweet it was, to have kissed her lips, to have been, her lover

She sits
Atop a myrtle bush
Wingless
She cannot fly
But sends out her desire
Her future dreams
Through the unsuspecting air
Her belief
In distant generations
Borne upon the breeze
Hope of the unseen
Messaged across the barren lands
And am I powerless?

Emptiness
echoes but does not return
the same lifeless message.
Only the stillness of the room reflects
such dreary gasps for color
and that still desire of the moth
longing to surpass its dull greys
for the wings of a fluttering butterfly
in its glory days.

there are some people whom you simply cannot pull the darkness out of
you can love and love and love and they will empty you and ask why you have nothing more to give
because sometimes moths are drawn to your light
and sometimes it is better to protect yourself than try to save people
no amount of nourishment can help someone who doesn't want to bloom
there is a fine line between friendship and toxicity
I hope you learn to draw it

In silence, I pray with a reference never before known to me.
It is soft and fragile,
tentative, like a child,
small, like a grasshopper.
It floats from one ray of light to another,
with a loud whoosh that does not ask for pardon for its sound.
It speaks in a tight whisper,
throat raspy from lack of use,
or maybe too many cigarettes.
It flips onto that same cloud it floated on earlier,
moth wings flapping like some incandescent bug
lit up by the electricity of a bug-zapper.

Fear does not silence it.

--It rings its glamorous wings without entropy--

And so I offer a call into that wide madness of space.

It does not answer.

       I did not expect it to.

And that is okay.