Dear Mothman: A Novel in Verse

by Robin Gow

Do you wear a chest binder or do you bind with great broad leaves from deep in the forest? Lewis was sure you were queer like us.

It seems to me that “monsters” are almost always misunderstood— that “monster” is what people become when other people are afraid of them for being different. People like me are called monsters sometimes.

maybe there are like soul connections—lots of people you’re meant to meet.

Sometimes I miss my life before Lewis died. It feels like a place I used to live.

I have been thinking about it all day about how maybe it’s OK to be a monster

How do I know I’m not caught in someone else’s story?

Would it be so bad to be devoured by the night— to emerge a monster? To emerge as a moth person?

I’m wondering what it means that I came so close to the world of monsters and that I came back.

Maybe you don’t live only in this forest but in any deep beautiful darkness.