Me (Moth)

by Amber McBride

First position: It’s not your fault you lived. Second position: Until you are alone. Third position: Fault lines multiply. Fourth position: So you sacrifice. Fifth position: For accidently living, for being so filled with life, death did not recognize you.

You also walk like there are clouds beneath your feet. Your eyes move like you think everyone is dancing. Your voice is thick & smooth, like honey in a beehive.

I am a dancer, but I only dance with the air now. Your hair reminds me of the sky before the moon rises.

I conquered gravity while breaking my toes. I kissed the ground with every step. Being a dancer is like your name, though. You can’t stop being one just because your toes don’t fracture in your pointe shoes.

because dancing like a pebble skipping over water means your lungs have to be good at catching their breath.

The list grew like taffy, something sweet always strung between all of us.

Less living won’t bring them back,

I no longer drink the juice of the sun.

But I don’t know enough conjure; Grandfather passed to heaven before I learned & now the devil keeps nipping me through the ground, like he forgot one of his prizes, begging me back down down down.

He sings like fog being pulled from the lake. 4. He plays like birds’ wings kissing the wind.

I don’t understand why, but he sees me (Moth).

The largest species of moth is an omen & a blessing— depending on who you ask.

it’s harder to sway your hips when you are crafted to hunt.

Butterflies were made from the ribs of moths.

I’d rather be feared & blessed than be too perfect.

Dad said, Sometimes you have to dig deep, get a little dusty, to bury the seeds of your dreams.

sometimes I take what I should not because I live too hard & that is why the devil nips at me.

I hate me, too. For living & now strangling myself into living small.

I guess pain does that—it makes you want to forget.

My grandfather taught me. & no, dreams don’t change, we just pretend we don’t want them anymore.

It’s like you play the part of invisible for years & the egg cracks, revealing something other. Like when the warrior layers off his armor & even clothed, he feels naked.

A road trip is a thing that you go on & come back different.

You (Moth) will have to stretch your soul like an endless story to find your way.

Steps in new directions are the hardest to take & it is hard to be sure if Sani is the moon or just a dumb lightbulb.

Maybe moving forward in this Wrangler will be enough to feel at home (somewhere), if only for a moment. Maybe moving forward in this car will help to fill in Sani’s emptiness.

The best way to get to know someone, to get beneath their skin & into the bone, is to tell a story & offer music. A story explains who you want to be; the other shows who you are.

Sani: Touch is like a breeze through a shotgun house.

Sani: When it snows, the east wind is starving.

It’s not a road trip if we don’t explore; backtrack and get a little lost. Each pit stop a treasure on the map.

I wish I could be that hungry, but ever since the car split in two & my stomach sliced open, my belly cramps on food. It forgets to be a stomach. It wants to be a storm.

Stafford Air & Space Museum, Weatherford, Oklahoma: To investigate the vastness of the cosmos.

The Lighthouse, Palo Duro Canyon State Park, Texas: A rock shaped like a lighthouse; we stand on it with a flashlight & command the sky.

You have to bring an offering to a plantation. For the ancestors.

Death is a strange thing.

I know Sani must be angry— with his mother (her silence), his father (his important work), his stepfather (his fists), the universe (for delivering this).

I am sure at some point a tear mixed with soul escapes my cheek & splatters on the ground in the tiny graveyard filled with brown bodies. I hope I do not disturb the dead with my molting. I am stuffed by the sun; the more I ignite, the more I feel the heated hands of hell reaching up, begging me down. Like now that I am living they remember they forgot to take me down down down.

Most of the founding fathers were like that; they spoke of freedom but did not offer it to everyone. They had bodies in their closets.

He feels it all & it is all too much & not enough. He balances thunderclouds on his tongue before swallowing them. He has flown & fallen—like Icarus. That is why he doesn’t trust his own wings anymore.

Everything was green, then a white-faced virus claimed countless souls, clung to everything, claimed all the dirt. Broke the trees, impaled the land. Herded humans away. Took everything— everything, everything … Did not leave a crumb.

Nighttime is for storytelling.

Grandfather said nighttime is for the dead.

The Holy Ones planned the constellations to help us understand the passage of time.

I can’t dance. I can’t be so ravenous when it costs so much.

because in this story there are no innocents left.

Moth (Me): All stories have ghosts. Sani (looking sad): That is true.

You know, the whip forgets blood, cotton doesn’t recall mahogany hands & with all this forgetting, nothing stays.

& everything is peace until it isn’t.

’Cause sometimes you just have to run.

Moth (tears in her eyes): Why are the Holy People mad? Me (Sani): They are not mad. They know of better worlds.

Moth: Did you need someone to save you, Sani? Me (Sani): I needed someone to see me, Moth.