There’s a moth on my ceiling

with brown speckled wings and

legs like angry, arched black eyebrows.

With wide eyes and antenna shaped like fences shaped of crooked iron 

It trails a dust of glowing yellow

and doesn’t move for three days.

There’s a moth on my ceiling

and my parents ask me to kill it.

I forget and eventually, so do they. 

We live in commensalistic relationship 

for three silent, peaceful nights.

Neither of us bug each other,

we simply co-exist in this room.

There’s a moth on my ceiling 

that tells me I can fly. 

That I can reach the open air and leave

for many more nights than just three.

I ask why it doesn’t do the same.

Its wing and the vein by my forehead twitch within a second of each other.

We don’t talk after that.

There’s a moth on my ceiling

We stare at one another with big, abyssal eyes

With hopes and dreams that we hope will someday fly.

We start to stare though, in this infinite chess game,

and wait to see the other die.