as she slips out into the warm summer air,
her body bathed in the nectarine glow of a street lamp,
she joins the other night moths, like her, gently
spreading their soft fragile wings.
they see each other and do not see each other
like ghosts - they sound like them too,
soft breaths of air brushing across closed eyelids -
and always searching, searching through the melody
of fluttering dreams, for a method of flight.
it is something unattainable, the moon - it is simply too much
to ask for, too much to hold in the palm of her hand,
but she burns with half-formed hope, and the moon's
pale surface looks cool and inviting, a pond she could dive into
and extinguish the flames licking at her heart.
she is so tired of being wounded, so tired of being identified
by the scars that lie across her wings like streaks of paint
but twice as permanent and not so beautiful,
scorch marks from flying too near the sun - she, and all the rest,
bear them as reminders of when they came in contact
with dreams so dangerous and desirable that to seek meant
to lose everything. the moon, though, that is not so dangerous -
perhaps because it is unattainable.