Moths and Mosquitos

Moths and Mosquitos
By L. Dykeman

I like watching those small white butterflies that come around here in the spring and stay through most of the summer. Their wings look very soft and round, with their black bodies covered in what must be millions of tiny, pale hairs. They're actually not butterflies, someone once told me, but moths. But I still call them butterflies, daytime messengers of fairies landing on a flower with a tiny kiss each and every time. There's something about the way they flutter about from place to place that represents a certain peace, maybe even a piece of certainty. Something I can never catch because my hands are too slow, and in their human coarseness would surely crush any firmness in my palm. When there’re two butterflies, they will play with one another, usually disappearing from my sight in a connecting and unconnecting mirage of flapping wings and kissing bodies. They're mating. They're fighting. Or some other scientific answer. But I don't really care. Because I say... they play.

I’ve been told many times, however indirectly, that I was born to be miserable. They say the emotion has become so built into my character that I feel it under everything, always crawling under my skin, snaking through the roots of my hair, running an icy finger down my spine, stopping in the small of my back, getting closer, and very gently breathing on my neck. And then it whispers, “All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” Not my own words, but a mass quote. Sometimes the sensation makes my mind feel like it’s going to split in half, and I’ve got to put my hands over my ears to keep it together. And yet, I think it takes very little to make me happy. This world, however, does not seem to offer what I seek; this 'very little' is said to be impossible to obtain, therefore becoming a strange monstrosity, a deformity of an imagination gone too far. And finally, oh, and definitely not least, I am a coward, working always to overcome this self ordained misery, but never looking into my own eyes for the answer I know is there, because I don’t know what it’s going to be.



White lights are beautiful at night, especially when it's very late and quiet, just before the birds begin to chirp and after the insects have given up their songs. The smaller the lights, the more delicate their glow, the more their existence seems to become an illusionary magic. I wish I had a porch swing that was connected to the branch of a blossoming apple tree, and that a string of those small white lights ran throughout it, hanging down in a few places and wrapping around the chains of the swing. And I want to sit out there all night, with no Mosquitos, no fear, no worries about a job, money, or politics, murderers, drugs, or crime, or fire, floods, or storms. I just want to sit there and let him rock the swing back and forth while he talks incessantly about none of those things. The reflection of the white lights in his eyes reminds me of his soul, as it would be in that place, free from everything but the present. How it could be, but never will, because it's impossible. But futility is only a word. Human beings cannot escape hell, because it is constantly a part of and within us all. However, even though I’ve always found that good and evil are codependent, I have also found that I have the choice of which will dominate my actions.




Smile to Smile

The waves crashed below us
As peaks of frosted sapphire.
I watched your eyes as they scanned
The orange horizon, becoming fiery orbs.
"I've never seen the ocean before,"
You said with one of those smiles.
"Does it go on forever, you think?"
"No," I replied softly and looked at the water.
You shook your head from side to side
And allowed a few pieces of grass
To fall from the gathering in your palm,
Blades cascading into the monsters below.
"Yes it does," you laughed.
And I smiled at you.



White roses with those peachish pink centers that very gradually get darker and darker as they come together, I find extremely enticing. It’s because they have a sweet smell to them, so much so that I can hardly resist taking a bite out of one or drinking the water that they fill up with when it rains. I think they would go very well with soft music and a semi-sweet, white champagne.



If I weren't so unhealthy, I would not even go to a damn college. The only reason I am going is so I can get a good enough job to have decent health insurance. Going to school is no longer a quest for knowledge, a scholar's venture to explore the world and broaden their mind. It's a pirate's game and the only purpose the bounties of gold and whatever other spoils you might reap from those you drag beneath the waves. That's what I look forward to, isn't it? Isn’t my destiny predetermined by the choices I make from the options ‘the world’ has given me? Can it only be a life of servitude to creditors and shackles of account numbers or citizenship, social security for a lifetime of social slavery?


Take a side. Cast a vote. Now. Now. Now. Stand for something. But take it from this list. Make a decision. But whose platform is most favorable to my interests? What am I? Conservatives, liberal, capitalists, socialist, democratic, communist, dyke, republican, anarchy, cult, devil, artist, professional, or wretch. Choose. Choose. Choose. What are you? Take this label and stitch it into your forehead. Don't mind the blood, just keep sewing, bear the pain, the sacrifice, push the needle in and out till your wings feel like they are going to fall off. There you are, don't you feel better now, my little designer man. Because only now, you’re worth something. And your feet are planted safely on the ground.


FREAK, it said backward on my forehead when I looked in the mirror. I took a deep breath, digging my mechanical fingers into my head, the skull of which somehow had taken on the consistency of gelatin. I wrapped the fingers around the canvas like cloth of the tag, and then with one savage jerk, ripped it from my head, stitching and all. But there was now a gapping wound in it's place, and my liquefied brain spilling into my eyes and then swirling down the drain of a pearly white sink. My mind is floating with the fishes, and flying high in the sky through clouds above your head and mine. Every time it rains, a little of it falls back into my head, and some day, if I live that long, maybe I'll have it back and I can sew up the hole with a patch that says, "White Butterfly."


I've never really understood music very well, but I love people that do. And I love to hear them sing without any instruments, especially if they don't have a beautiful voice. But a sweet voice, it still has to be sweet. It's the sweetest thing to watch people singing to themselves, sort of bouncing their head a little from side to side in rhythm. Almost everyone does it. And he could always do that under the apple tree, if he would just sit there with me.


I could buy that tree and put up the lights, and hang a swing, but that really defeats the purpose doesn't it? Because the mosquitos will still be there. And so I can predict his future, if he's an American. He'll probably go to a great college, vote in every election, and marry a pretty, 'Young Republican' who goes to church with him on Sundays, has his kids, has a brilliant career after she raises them to be model citizens, and cares more about what he's saying than why or how he says it. If he lives in a different society, it won't matter. It will be exactly the same, but in a different language of nouns, subjects, indirect objects, verbs, and conjunctions etc. My future is also inevitable, isn't it? I'll go to college all right, write my cynical little stories for no one to read, drink a bottle of hard liquor a day, and die under the guotine in a never ending uprising of citizens. I am Sydney Carton. And everything is wrapped into one acrid web of dependence, doubt, and circumstance, right? And you can't rip your way out of it unless you chop off your limbs and leave them behind. Or even your head, so you can just roll, roll, down and down, far, far away from here. Can I be whole if I hack myself to pieces?

I won't think of him when I die, because all I'll be able to see are little white butterflies, glowing like Christmas lights as they fly away amongst falling petals and a mist of champagne. And all of it will be in the black center of a smiling eye, belonging to a boy who died years before, and who wrote the pretty music that plays on and on and no one seems to hear but me, because the moths are swarmed by the noxious buzzing sound of their mosquitos.