The Moth's Question

The moth spirals closer to the lamp's insistent glow, drawn not by hunger but by something deeper— a confusion between light and survival, between the warmth that attracts and the heat that destroys.

Its wings bear the dust of a thousand smaller journeys, patterns like ancient maps no one remembers reading. It hovers in the threshold between inside and out, between the safety of darkness and this beautiful, terrible pull.

We watch from our distance, indifferent architects of the barriers between worlds. The moth does not ask why the light calls to it. It only knows the ache of being drawn toward illumination, knowing, perhaps, that this is how we are all made.