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’.