A White Moth
-Mridara

When I was born
God put a white moth into my hand
The white in a moth meant death
But it wasn’t so to me.
The whiteness bestowed upon my moth was the curse of morality.
I looked upon his whiteness like the quiet purity of the moon,
The purity of morality when first given to a being.

I tried hard to keep him beautifully white.
But his color always slipped.
Its flaky feathers were often ruffled by my rough hands.
When space tempted
He would try to escape.
White or black, all moths liked the night.

As days went by,
He no longer was his old self
His wings had turned into different shades of mud.
My hands were his prison,
Binding him like a specimen in a museum while he was still alive.
I couldn’t grant him freedom; it was against the laws of civilization.
The darkness in the cove of my hands wouldn’t suffice for him.
He longed to wander into eternal dark spaces.

As more days went by,
Crippled and suffocated
He laid down numb
And atlast,
Only after his energies were spent,
The meaning of existence dawned upon me.
I opened up the prisons.
In the moonlight.
He came alive
And flew into the dark of the night

What was morality anyway? Nothing but a meaningless delusion…

- 19 / 3 / 2007