when the moths disappear

the moth she knew lived on the entirety of the ceiling in her childhood bedroom. 

her ceiling, a consistent white, was painted entirely by the moth’s body. yet even still the intricacies of its rarity and patterning were lost upon her in the minimal evening light as its sedimentary colors became vague and muted shades of black. each wing fanned out to form a triangle shape, ending closest and at its widest, near the entrance of the room. the moth’s shoulders that hinged wing to body resided right above her bed, the furthest from the door.

they never met each other’s faces. its eyes pointed up at the ceiling but the thin antennas hung down completely still unless stirred by her motion. the moth, to put it simply, was massive. but, who could manage to acknowledge beautiful rarities when they’re holding their breath? 

from childhood to teenagerdom to young adulthood amidst nightly terror, she learned to fear even the slightest movement of the average moth in the daytime. she did not know their connection to the colossal one that acted as captor on her ceiling, and not a fool enough to think a creature of that size could be anything but a threat. she worshiped the light of day, its warmth, and most importantly its dignity in the control of insect size. 

she never paused to consider how this moth could navigate an entrance and exit to her bedroom, not even the front door of her home could account for its height, much less the window. yet, the moment she closed her eyes to sleep and managed to reopen them, without even having to wait to adjust to the tree-filtered starlight she knew to tense. the dust would already be swirling, lightly landing on her skin, the bed, and the carpet below. she would be trapped by the immense anxiety of being potential prey, and the moth would exist above her. waiting. 

if she moved, the dust accumulated even faster and she feared she would suffocate as it shed onto her. if she ran, she thought it would attempt to take off and fly and crush her with a simple flutter of one of its extensive wings. so she held her screams still within her abdomen and caught any runaways between her teeth and the flesh in her mouth. she held her fear within the pressure of a single palm and repeatedly prayed to the daytime for the light to return, strip the moth from her ceiling, and contort it into normalcy. 

by the time the sun returned and she reopened her eyes that she swore she never closed, the only trace of the moth that haunted her was the diagram painted on the inside of her cheek by her teeth and the slight fingernail prints left on the inside of her palms. 

she and the moth met the eyes of each other only once. it was at the cusp of adulthood when warmth finally decided to bless the month of february, as if the daytime and sunlight she prayed to heeded her by beginning to invade more and more of the lights waking hours with a fervor, stealing away the cool comfort of a typical winter day. seemingly inspired by the brazenness of the temperature that day, when she reopened her eyes to retain her nightly dread, for the first time, the moth’s eyes peered back into her own. 

with the darkness of its eyes staring into her own, the body of the moth took color. the faded blacks became browns and in the dappled light, the moth resembled the patternings of tree bark. with an inhale, she closed her eyes. with a deep and exerted exhale, she attempted to calm the heartbeat that ransacked her body. 

the moth crumbled into her on the impact of breath. 

the wings fell into dust heaps. they coated the windows blocking out the minimal light that the night sky provided. they invaded her lungs as she opened her mouth to wail and found the wing particles dissolved inside of her. she could not evade her perceived captor’s decomposition as what was left of the body fell from the ceiling, sending the remainder of its wings into the air with a touch of finality and trapping her inside of the bedroom for the remainder of the night once more.

when her eyes opened to the day, the untold graveyard of the moth had disappeared and she spent the day caressing the warmth of winter. but when she returned to sleep that night she sunk instead, for the first time, into an abyss with no consistency, alone. 

the abyss became the new nightly repetition. alone. 

the moth never returned.

[in this short story, ky recalls a story highlighting their fear of moths. yet, despite the terror of this colossal moth many moth species around the world are disappearing at a rapid rate due to climate change impacts, specifically the temperature changes happening so rapidly the species cannot adapt accordingly. they attempt to address, through this piece, that although the source of the fear of an insect may disappear as species decline, is that a better situation? learn more about the decline of moth populations here.]