-
Instinct
- Southern Illinois University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
41 Instinct Bottle rockets and beer, my eyes sting and I wander from my friends’ smoky chatter. Do they know my heart’s gone wrong again? Night’s heat stifles me like an unwanted kiss and something intangible sprouts fingers. I find a luna moth. She quivers in the water, large as the palm of my hand, black circles like eyes. I lift her out with a pool net, the papier-mâché body tangled in damp mesh. Prickly legs grip my fingers, antennae question the breath I blow across chlorined wings. All that afternoon we’d fished tree frogs out to keep them from dismemberment in the ruthless suck and thrum of the pool’s vacuum. Slippery, muscled bodies emerald bright, 42 their bulbous fingers were sticky and clever— swivel of gleaming, prehistoric eye and tender palpitating bellies. We slipped them into Tupperware and Rubbermaid and carried them down to the sliver of creek to let them go—jeweled heads beating the lids like microwave popcorn. Hours later, they were back, cool mossy bumps with songs too big for their bodies lining the undersides of the pool gutters. I don’t know what it is that brings me to this same point, time after time. Maybe my spirit is inconsolable the same way this luna moth, who navigates by the light of the sun and the moon, was mistakenly drawn in by the pool’s flood lamps. But I make too much of this moth, waiting for her to die in my hands. Fireworks, mosquitoes raising welts on my back, fingers mushrooming [13.58.151.231] Project MUSE (2024-04-19 13:51 GMT) 43 the poison home. And when the quivering stops, I make myself crush it, like a cigarette butt underneath my shoe. ...