Me (Moth)

by Amber McBride

KISSING SANI (FEELS LIKE…) Witnessing a blue sunset on Mars; harvesting the notes that are impossible to sing. As natural as the gray wolf moving the moon across the sky without misplacing her howl. Like keeping company with the mouths of mermaids; a sea burial—benthic creatures peacefully encroaching. It’s like if a blue whale lost its soul mate for a decade, then when they find each other they sing & dance & the ocean tsunamis with them, saying: Look at that, their tongue prints still match. Like home home home.

I bet it takes a lot of energy to heal,

I’ve dreamed of your face before, but your hair was a swarm of fluttering moths.

Why is it always like this? The ones who are hard as stone, the ones who don’t expand & contract like a pupil exposed to light, are left to crack slowly.

maybe they help like when he takes his white-and-blue ones (consistently) so that his sadness comes in steady waves instead of a spiraling typhoon.

Honey, you can keep me forever, like a phantom limb.

He says, You should fear ghosts, but I would take my family see-through, like papier-mâché, or solid.

You forget why the breeze is a miracle & why the stars are a gift.

I know, I know, but when I am consistent I can’t see the truth clearly. Even the moon seems different.

I drift through days & skip through weeks like skipping stones over water.

By the time we reach the campsite the moon is as old & golden as captured fireflies.

Tilting the light, Coyote is many things. Like a soul.

Souls love chaos, I suppose.

Now I don’t know the difference between a miracle & a curse.

His voice rides the wind, ignites my spine, sets my toes on fire.

Dancing again feels like glass feathers falling on a silver city. Like Grandfather coaxing magic from roots. Like god is in the brown dirt I stomp on.

I dance like the west wind is winding, twining our souls together like red strings.

Even though I was a beach with no sand, a starless sky before you.

But dreamers wake, fables end, lyrics are forgotten & cocoons break open, eventually.

It is like he is asking me to leave— begging me to go.

I danced & he left, just like everyone else.

I was the sticky filling that survived the crash because I had to live for this. I think there might have been a line fating us to meet. I think it was buried red & bright in the earth, strung from the Motherland to the candy bar car. It yanked me hard enough to fracture. Soft enough to make sure I crossed your path. Do you think there is still a string underground connecting us? When the car crashed, did you feel me shatter? When you close your eyes & play & sing, do you feel me dancing? If I melt away, reassemble wrong, will you find me?

he holds me like he will never ever let me go again.

My friend, I know I ask too much, but if your son can help her home, she’ll teach him how to live.

You will have trouble crossing from here to there. Such is often the way with crossings, but you can’t stay here, in your cocoon. Moth, you must live big, grow sturdy wings that can fly you to a different sky.

The ancestors are with you, Moth, you are never alone. I taught you. You have magic in your bones. Open your eyes, open your eyes, I would never leave you trapped—defenseless. Go to the crossroads & walk north home.

I want to reach for him, but he slips through my fingers.

Moths are both omens & miracles.

There is a whole lot of heaven waiting for you.

No one tells you you can fall in love for the first time when you are already gone.

No one ignored me because no one saw me. No one sees the sphinx next to the trio of giant pyramids. I’ve been entombed in the dirt. Covered in dust, growing wings only to leave?

My wild heart didn’t think it could die. So I stayed & punished myself for living. & now I can’t stop falling falling falling.

Music abandoned me until you came along.

It turns out when you step out of a cocoon, you can step out less alive but light enough to fly. It turns out there is enough magic & love in the universe to mold your own death mask but not fully die.

It’s never the song. It’s the movement of gray notes stacked over dark matter.

Is this the leaving, or the staying, or the long, long goodbye? How does one remember how to die?

It is brighter than bright, warmer than warm & I still want to stay with the boy who is often as silent as a seahorse.

Some mystical red string stitched up the length of my spine holds me in two places. My spirit has been looped with Sani’s. & I don’t know how to unstitch. I don’t know how to unravel this magic. With each step away, holes pock my soul. My sphinx moth wings flutter dusty golden glitter. I say, Sani, when you sing I’ll dance, I’ll hear you, somehow.

Where death is just one dimension, one reality, in a universe of thousands.

Leaving is the hard part.

You grew them yourself, Moth. They are yours forever. You can always hover.

If I remember to sing, to live … Honey, please haunt all my dreams.

’cause spirits do not die— they shift.

Where we live in a cocoon, backs laced together along the spine, each of our bodies a wing so when we are born again, we are one, never to part & we can fly & sing & dance. We are one, just you (Moth) & me

Hoodoo is neither good nor bad; it is balance.

“My Body Is a Cage,” Arcade Fire “Monster 2.0,” Jacob Banks “Shrike,” Hozier “Sweet Beautiful You,” Stateline “Strange Fruit,” Nina Simone “Lungs,” Jake Howden “Samson,” Regina Spektor “Where I Want to Go,” Roo Panes “In a Sentimental Mood,” Duke Ellington and John Coltrane “All My Life,” Texada “Lover, Don’t Leave,” Citizen Shade “I’ll Be Seeing You,” Billie Holiday