Moth

I burnt myself yesterday, an accident of sorts. Trying to keep up with the others, the golden flame enticed my hand.
I put it out, killed it in all its beauty. My reckless fingers. My filthy hands.
The rosy waves, they softly lapped my fingers. The flame, its wings fluttered and engulfed. And I couldn't feel it.
No pain inflicted to worry the birds, or stir animals that might feed on me. No cry or scream of anguish. It was all quite brief, quite sudden.

I think of myself as a moth. Perhaps we are both moths and we hatched from wardrobes too close to one another.
Two lifetimes spent bumping into bright lights in shadowed rooms. Lifetimes pressed hard against windows that trap and goad with the beauty they offer. And we’d fly so fast sometimes, almost blind.
Wings crushed and aflame, we met. Singed, flesh melting, we fell falling, spiralling. Downwards, ever aching, towards cooling waters, breaking.
One missed the pool below, burned for hours, survived.
The other broke the meniscus, soon cooled and sadly drowned.

And so I write, in fingers black with soot, on an ashen paper cup, ‘here lies the silken body of a once proud moth’.

Still life

A part of me has died, though it is a part of me I never knew.
It is a part I never met, never touched, never heard. A part I never hugged, never carried, never played with, never spoke to.
I wouldn’t have minded one-sided conversations, or early morning wake-up calls. Then walking together, learning from each other, ‘phoning me up from God knows where...
But I’m looking too far into an impossible future. Why did I never look before?
It isn’t that I won’t love you, and I suppose I’ll create my own memories. The hardest thing was that I saw you, so real, so human. Yet so pale, and so still.

Borrowing time

I plonked myself down on a plastic moulded chair.
The library, such as it was. A meagre array of workstations full of kids wanting to surf the ‘net for pictures of their favourite bands. A collection of slightly out-of-date reference books, their almost still factual information rendering them, in fact, completely useless.
Behind me I could hear the jabbering of a male teenage student. A highly impressionable girl had sat opposite him and was taking great delight in being regaled by this lad whom, it became apparent, was named John.
I returned to my book, as far as I was able. I managed to block most of the sound, or at least stop it from registering as coherent information, until a young Chinese student broke my concentration.
He seemed to be asking John if he knew where ‘Beccy’ was. John was polite enough but seemed slightly embarrassed in front of the unnamed female. He got rid of the other male.
“Howd’ya know him?”
“From music.”
“What’s he like?”
“Alright, like.”
Later they left and I looked up pictures of Chinese people on Google.
I don't remember how long it was until another person entered the room. I wish I had somewhere to be.

The nature of significance

"What did the text mean?" she asked, a purple scarf wrapped coyly around her face so that her eyes were partially covered like a belly dancer's veil.
"I don't know, or I'm not sure, anyway." That was his answer. She knew he would stare now. At the wall, the floor, out the window maybe, but he wasn't looking, just staring. But he never stared at her, he only ever looked.
She got up from the armchair were she had adopted a semi-Lotus position and immediately dropped to the floor. There was some rice from yesterday on the carpet, she noticed but ignored it. Instead, she crawled or shifted, uncovincingly, but somewhat snake-like, towards the couch were he sat and pondered a relevance, or a significance, or the nature of significance, or something else - hey was he watching the TV? No, his eyes weren't moving, though they were transfixed on the wall behind that girl. She's wearing a gold bra and a thong and he's looking at the wall. She's moving around so much and he's not even seeing it.
The snake moved toward the TV set and unbuttoned its blouse. 'He'll notice me though,' she knew.