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moth
Across the suburban road, the nightly rectangle of darkness lights up, and so too follows
the light in my head. She is there, wispy hair a crown, a halo of brilliance in my telescope
lens.
? She lifts her arms up, over her head. Through the window I can see her. Soft, white,
pale princess, precious soft lovely. My eyes have been glued to the window, glued to this
bit of glass. They have a life of their own. Sometimes I would like to instead read a book
or look at my collection of butterflies, but when she is in the window my eyes disobey.
They glue to the window, and if I could pluck them out, squeeze my eyelids hard toward
the socket, they would still go, flying, glued to the window.
? I have been unable to leave this room this winter. Dusty, it has become filled with
fragments, filaments of too much habitation. Flakes of skin, crusts of bread growing
moldy, the spicy, soy sauced scent of my unwashed body. I have not given leave to leave
this room because I wait for her to come home. If she comes to the window and I am
not here to see her, how sad she will be! How lost, poor bird.
? When her light turns off, when that rectangle of glass goes dark, so does the old bone
chamber inside my insides. All my life I’ve watched her, or all of this life I’ve watched her,
this life which began this last past autumn. When the shape of her licked me, soft, in the
corner of my eye as I stood stooped, bent, raking the leaves. I must have had a previous
life, accountant or attorney or fry cook, but at first sight, I loved her, forgot, and began
to become like this, a crawling creature – crawling in the night.
? Tonight when the light goes off, I will seek her. With my hook I will ascend to her
window a-grappling, then tip tap tap tap toward her. When then I see her and that wan
little white face opens, eyes all sleep befuddled and wondering, I will take her hand and
touch her lips with my big right thumb. And she’ll come with me, she’ll say, “I’ve been
waiting all winter!” and I’ll be able to keep her.
? And so, the curtain of her blouse ascends and her skirt descends and sylph-like,
waifish, she turns on tiptoe to quiet the lights.
? And I am swimming across the lawn and clicking across the asphalt and slipping up
the sidewalk toward her darkened rectangle window. Up-clinking flies my hook, and
one, two, three, four, five, paw over paw and foot over foot, I climb so swift, then heft
the window and I am in, In, IN!
? The smell of her, her spaces and her graces. Lavender, springtime, dust and ruddy
young girl. Soft, light, deft, I am an imperfection gliding across a field of moonlight. To
stand beside her (so close!), to see her so near (eyelashes!) to touch her skin (like cream!)
to part those half-pursed lips.
? Then noise! Then the scream as her eyes fly open, capturing me in her round wide
eyeballs, staring shrieking unblinking. I am fleeing like the shadow before the light; I
am being sucked, pulled backward by the silhouette of my darkened house. Swirling,
whirling, like an insect being flushed down the commode. Gone and crashing through
my front door, sobbing as the lights fly on across the street, and the shrieking gives way
to questing voices, and the night fills up with my howling, and the howling of sirens.
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