Yucca Moth: A Poem

I tried to be good. I tried

teeth bared filed down into a smile

to blanket the moths dead on the window sill, 

with white lilies sprawled across eggshell-crushed wings

To resurrect the yucca moths with tap water and pixie dust

Lifespan cursed to 2 days

I can't save them from the hand of nature or by the hand of my own 

But the beetles in the window screen have been trapped for many lifetimes,

and lord what a lonely thing, to be born doomed 

but with wings

They never woke up, they never will 

I never really will either

Something has rotted inside of my body, 

all sick and bloated, the night making me green

It sits inside of me unable to be digested kicking and crying

like a baby in a womb

It's all the hurt and pain of my rotten little creation

a pretty mess of big patterns that never seem to end or begin,

that I can't turn into beautiful art, no matter how hard I wish with tap water and pixie dust.

Inside is like an abandoned puzzle with all the pieces wrong,

put me back together and close my eyes.

Outside the windowsill is a beautiful garden, set us loose in the green fields,

lay the moth on top and surround me in the generations of beetles, 

all that gore is one big sob away from deaf ears. 

I tried to be good but I was never any good.

Always trying to sew up the bullet holes,

a vicious fixer that tore the hole deeper in an attempt to save the soft bits found within. 

No more pixie dust and love can be stuffed inside before the heart explodes, 

before you're tasked with force-feeding your corpse,

and sewing the lilies onto the holes instead. 

The chorus of a dawn rising upon the garden lowers the span of the yucca a day shorter,

bringing up the graveyard of bodies I couldn't take from the sill and home,

only if I wanted to rip it open and stitch it back together again

with only the sting of a broken needle constantly stabbing and poking me. 

They'd asked where I'd gone

(I'm in the sill) and I said I stayed forever young

and flew away into the night with the pixie dust I could no longer swallow

(cut the sill open and hold me).

Leave the door unlocked

I'm still outside in the garden buried with the moths and generations of beetles.

(The hours tick by, save me) 

Keep running and searching,

attempt to catch me but know my escape will only last a few short hours, the span of the yucca.

Cursed to be born and die inside the window sill for the span of 48 hours, comfort me in my short time