Mothhead

Something is wrong with the streetlight illumination; Night snuffs out each lamp, as a great hand, and soon there’s nary a light besides my phone, a passing car. I stand awaiting a bus to jostle me to my Airbnb. I blink away each semblance of thought that comes to me, swatting at them. I cannot bear them, not now, but they settle on me nonetheless; fuzzy black moths to a large buzzing lamp. One crawls over my eye just now: Mother’s phone call. Everyone’s getting older, he is sick, and she suffers from that, and this one’s wound just won’t heal, what’s going on?—Everyone’s getting older. I did not know what to say and I could not simply agree (as if denying it would make it wrong). Another tickles my lips: Do you ever think of all those unacknowledged final times? The last time you… All the ones you live through without due gravitas. I feel one attempting to burrow into my ear: the old world is dying, and the new one is unborn yet. Time of moths. My hand goes to my forehead, brushing against them, moth powder on my fingertips, and I urge: All I want, all I need, is to merely validate an electronic ticket I’ve purchased on some app, then take a seat. Put us out of our misery forces its way out of my mouth to flutter blackly before my face. It perches itself on my nose. I’m sorry, these come out as tics. Strange little bursts of anguish; they lash out, the bastards, even nibble on my skin, graze upon my hair. But here, there it comes, it is line 13. I board along with my crown of moths, press my phone to the validator and walk to a seat knowing the ticket did not scan. I am windowside. I mindlessly scan the dark street out the window as I wait for the bus to embark on its journey. A moth sends shivers in the back of my neck, and I briefly remember how buses, to me—likely to others, too—are a kind of amplification chamber. Here I’m beset by them; woes and sensations are enlarged till they flutter-echo loudly all around me. I cannot help it; it’s my swaying, transporting confessional. Unseen driver, my mute priest, can you hear my compliment? Other night passengers board, some behind, some up front. We’re all on, so the driver moves ahead. I’m sorry, I misled; I don’t sit alone. On my right, holding on invisibly-though-tight, is the moon. It follows steadily and bursts through plumes and clouds, making a lunatic of me. Also, much lower, at level with me, out the window hangs a mirrored, disembodied pale arm, drumming on air; the pinky starting, the ring mimicking, the middle following, and the index concluding, sending the motion back to pinky, to restart. But enough of that. I look straight ahead and see a young man sitting alone, a pot with some herb between his hands, crinkly cellophane. I believe it’s a gift from him to…? Whom? This language I helplessly muse in, the words I’m using; rungs in a ladder or bricks in a prison? A prism; move it this way, now that, see how everything refracts. I sway and watch the man, the back of his curly head. He turns slightly to look to the left, showing me a sliver of profile. He is innocence, and I think to inhabit him, if only briefly. I will learn his ways, to whom to bring the potted gift, whom to kiss and whom to call and where to be, come morn. I can do it. Just, please, submit and be my husk, my host. Allow me an escape from this, this testa di falene, the fluttering in my ears, world-weariness, banal. I’ll inhabit you till I can bear yours no longer. On and on, yeah? I rise to disembark, and he does too. I go through the sighing rear door, and he? From the front. He is now closer to the crossing, but I’m close enough and I follow. It looks like we are bound in the same direction, on this empty street. I need not even vision as the moths sit compact, interlocked over my face entire for I know from which way riverwind blows. I hurry up, my shoes thudding, and I reach out, fingers caressing wind until I feel a touch of shirtcloth over shoulder so I grasp hold firm yank back moths take flight and he turns and—
I hope Eli likes the scent. She said third floor, right?