Scraps: Moths

Cara isn’t daddy’s little girl anymore, not after the baby came. Her mother and father have stopped talking and a stillness hangs over the house like a net that none of them can speak through.

Some nights she watches moths burn in the bug light. She is drawn to the flailing green wings as they flitter into flames. She likes it best when the big ones burn for two to three minutes, their wings like little torches. Eventually the torches fizzle and she waits until another is lured into the deadly blue light.

Other nights she sneaks into the baby’s room and pinches its soft pink cheeks between her fingers. She likes to hear the baby cry. The sound is jagged and she imagines it slowly rising up the chimney and through the windows, rising until it eats a hole in the net as big as the one in the ozone, and through the hole all the stilted language could escape. The whispers that were never said would fly up from the net like moths released from a cage.