Moths

She smiles at me and chews her orange slices slowly. They’re her favorite fruit. My mother’s table is littered with books with titles like Anatomy of a Moth and Order Lepidoptera: A Study. The books have the same rough texture as a moth, but they have yet to fly away back onto the shelves. She shows me an ivory moth that she pressed into a family album. Thin black stripes and crescents decorate the dry canvas that is its body. I squirm at the sight of it. As my mother talks, her ears slowly transform, stretching into two moths with pale, round eyes on their wings.
Soon, her whole body is eclipsed by the insects, and her clothes fall to the dark walnut floor. The moths floating in front of me and the orange slices are the only remnants left of her.

It’s a dream I have often, but even when I’m awake, the walls in my room belong to the moths. At night, the flutter of their wings by my face wakes me, and I stare out onto the empty streets and the blueish moon that cascades across them. There’s the occasional group of college students walking home from a late night out, and sometimes my neighbor, an elderly woman in a beige detective coat, humming a lullaby from my childhood that I cannot quite remember. My beige curtains whack against my window, and the moth’s wings smack the air around them as they fly to sit near my head or explore the crevices in my large oak desk and bookshelf.

Tonight, like any other, a moth strikes, and I wrap my comforter around myself as I check the time. It’s 3:18 in the morning, and the daily reminder on my phone is already waiting for me. The bright, blue-white glow coming from my phone against my dark room almost blinds me, but I manage to squint. In bold black letters, the reminder says, Talk to Tomas about moths with the phone number of my landlord, Tomas. I swipe to the left, and it’s gone, but it doesn’t matter. The message will sprout from its cocoon again tomorrow morning. The moths began to appear after I took in some of my mother’s mothball-scented sweaters, almost like they were a package deal. They trick me with their gentle presence as they pull at the threads of my clothing. I haven’t taken the time to figure out if they are friends or foes.

I groan, wobble out of bed, and walk to my kitchen to make tea so I can sleep. Five moths follow me as if they’re craving chamomile too. I add two generous teaspoons of golden honey as my mother does, and most of the moths rest on the counter.

One plants itself on the edge of the mug until I pick it up.

I amble back to my room with the honey spoon clinking in the mug and four of the moths joining me at my feet and shoulders. When the tea is finished and I’ve had enough of the tattered, blue book on my bedside table, I manage to drift off again.

In the morning, I eat an orange. I peel the pieces and the fiber apart, leaving just the juiciest section. I bite into a slice, drain the liquid, and it becomes limp. The remaining fiber leaves a bitter taste in my mouth like always, and I decide that the short reward of oranges isn’t worth it anymore.

Soon after, I leave my building to take the long route to work with three of my moths trailing behind me. It’s not a large city, but soon, the streets fill with adults in neutral clothing and their tired children trudging behind on their way to school. My stomach curdles at the thought of work, and I sympathize with the children forced to go to school day after day. My mother dislikes how I’ve settled for a dull job. I’ve always envied her ability to know what she wants. As I walk, the scent of tiger lilies from a shop swirls around me briefly, and I breathe it in. I wonder if the moths like it too.

I take a shortcut home in the evening so I’m not left in the early winter dark, rushing to avoid shadows that resemble humans. I speed past stores with steel shutters and restaurants filled with the sounds of scraping forks and laughter. On my way, I turn my head and realize that two moths stayed with me, and a smile creeps on my face. I decided, confidently, that one must have liked my job and decided to stay.

When I get back to my building, I stand in the lobby and unpause a voicemail saved on my phone from my mother. I have it memorized now, verbatim. My landlord trudges down the stairs in my direction, and a single moth gracefully lands on my phone screen, covering my mother’s phone number. It is rust-colored and has markings in the shape of clementine wedges. I smile at it, grateful for its gentle presence. As I observe its delicate wings, my landlord waves to me and I smile weakly. I tell him about the moths, ashamed of how my home has descended into a moth-ruled mess, and he says he’ll fix it by next week. He pushes away his thinning, gray hair and laughs at the sight of the one on my phone, its wings almost transparent above the luminescent cell phone screen. His eyes crease in the corners, and he chuckles, “You really do have a problem!”

I begrudgingly head into the elevator and notice that the moth that was with me all day is gone. Each absent moth peels a wedge from my heart, and each wedge misses its former companion. I feel a familiar wet warmth surrounding my eyes, even though I know there will be a group of moths scattered around my apartment for a little longer.

The home I share with the moths will soon just be mine. My heart will flutter at the sight of my barren home, but I won’t let any memories fly away. But I suppose the comfort they gave me was always meant to be fleeting. The elevator rings, and when I’m on my floor, I plan to make tea like my mother makes it. Or, how she used to make it.

She’s gone, but I still hear her flutter and cling to our walls.

Zahari Fine is a young Gambian-American writer from Upstate, New York. She has been writing fiction since kindergarten and coming up with stories since she could speak. She writes to bring awareness to social issues, and often works on pieces focusing on race in America and its complexities abroad. Her recognition as a writer has come from school awards and the Scholastic Alliance for Young Writers. Fine has started making her own creative writing blog and looks forward to becoming a published author. She loves to journal until her hand cramps and draw as another creative outlet.