I am a moth
but this is not a story about fire.

I am not a tangled metaphor for love
of which I heave myself into blind, wild,
sucked down by honeyed light to burnt
the wings off my own ribboned back.
A paper angel, flint lighter fisted into glow
welding love notes to dark ash, this desire
to feel some caustic heat of another’s life
coalesce into mine, suicidal, nearly sweet,
aside from all the destroying and destroying.

This is not a story about killing’s grace.
Not a story about human hearts wandering
to heaven, tripwiring too close to the sun,
boiling wax groping down my sharp spine,
pearling into hatred. No, I am not another icarus.
I am not a martyr for adoration’s heavy cross,
I am not a lover of the pain, the steep fall,
I am not a creature of flame-gold, hungry for light,
I am not even a harbinger of temptation.

I am a moth 
how I disappear in daylight.

How I swarm through darkness’s ebb,
washing up limp, bleached in pools, dead
in wet dreams, some unholy mystic thing
to knife through. I am only found beautiful 
when my abdomen is torn open, exposed
to dazzle under glass. I am only real to you
when you turn off the lights, pretend to sleep.
I blend into the scenery, fade into walls ghostlike.
You can’t feel me crawling on your cold shoulder.

My body has eyes, is one vast witness,
scares you with her consciousness, lucidity,
waltzes frantic through the summer nights 
seeing faces where there are none at all.
I spread myself thin, camouflage to your arms,
dissolve into tight spaces, I sheath myself
behind stronger things, sit in my starvation,
born without a mouth to cry with, to complain.
I let you get too close, pray the stillness works.

I am a moth
and this is a story about silence.