Moths

We know the moths circling the porch light, the dolt among them breaking orbit, dusty Icarus drawn to his demise.

This isn’t new, but seventeen others stuck on the wall have turned their wings against it, like stoics, as if the light isn’t light,

and if they move, it is only a slight flutter, a twitch of motion, before they still again. My mind should stop here—but we see

one push off from the wall, flying erratic, as if whiskey drunk or possessed, and we know the ones that lap around the light

were once still. Love, I know I could just flip a switch, that’s not the point. I count seventeen windows on our street

still lit—hundreds of lights in our neighborhood, millions in our city, each one attracts an asteroid belt of moths

flitting like dust motes, caught in the wind. Of course, when seen from a certain distance. I really should stop. It’s so cold tonight

when I shut my eyes, I can picture floating in space—the porch light becomes the red glare of the sun,

morphing shapes, like reflections fluttering on an astronaut’s helmet, or the threshold of light, shadowed

when my father came home late, paused at my door. He hardly ever entered. If he did, I’d pretend to be asleep, so he’d feel safe

to kiss me on the forehead, or pick me up, instead of just saying good night, shutting the door behind him. Let me tell you,

love, my father was no hell-bent lunatic, nor Daedalus, just a doctor who kept the appropriate distance between men, and I was merely a son

who’d blush in his father’s shadow. This isn’t new. Right now, the body of a moth has become a shadow in the light bulb. You aren’t here to see it.

You’ve been gone awhile now. I could say I’ve been a shadow since you left with a man more like my father. But that would be a lie.

We knew a breach opened between us like a tiny nick in an astronaut’s suit; we knew our touch felt like moth wings fluttering on skin.

You’ve been gone for a while. When I think it through, I haven’t been speaking to you at all. I’ve said love but meant him, meaning you, Father. Wasn’t it you

who taught me what it meant to fall? The force of gravity is constant, the force of gravity is actually the downward

acceleration the Earth imparts to all bodies, equally: the child dropped on the bed after kissing his father on the lips, a moth with burnt wings.