“You’re dwelling,” the moth started to play with my eyelashes, twirling its light body in sporadic spins.

I groaned, “Not you again,” I swiped at the air and asked, “Dwelling?”

“You sure are, are dwelling,” he did a big spin around my head, avoiding the smoke from a nearby cigarette. You could hear a ding each time he went through one of the thin smoke rings.

“Where am I dwelling? That word’s starting to sound funny now. Dwell, dwelling, dwell.”

“You’re dwelling in the past,” the moth landed on the shelf where my feet were resting and I tried to kick him away, but he wouldn’t be scared off.

In a moment of weakness, I spied on the swallow.

“Oh, now you’re just being trite.”

“If you dwell in the past—” the moth raised his buzz.

“—you forget to live today. Or something like that. I know it. Don’t patronize me.”

The moth was quick to be silent again, only humming a little tune or maybe a song, or just a breath. I never learned the anatomy of the mumbling moth. They didn’t interest me. Nevertheless, he always came back to me when I arrived in the dark room. Somehow he knew I didn’t belong there with the rest of the Gloomies. My gut was hurting though and I had to hide away and bide some time. I thought about crawling into myself, just raising my legs, crossing my arms over them, sucking in my breath and just disintegrating…into myself…to go somewhere, far from the thoughts of those red feathers and black beads for eyes.

“Where to?” the moth asked, “Where you gonna go off to again?”

“I want to run, just run to some other part of the world where no one knows my name, my shape.”

“You think things will be different?” he asked, “different if people don’t know your name? You’ll lie to them again, won’t you? Tell them you’re a fawn or an owl or something else silly.”

“The truth didn’t help much.”

“Not this time, no,” the moth persisted, “but next time…there’s always next time.”

“The swallow flew away. You saw it too, didn’t you. It just fucking melted. I caught it,” I remembered how I used my web and even had its wings outstretched, completely vulnerable, “It was beautiful. You could see the over-preening and the stress. You could see the hole where the tomcat had played a few years ago,” I imagined the cat running back into the wild, not even turning to see what it had done.

“That swallow was worn out.”

“I know…” I paused and my eyes went from the moth to the floor, “Why is it that we have this desire for the most dangerous things?”

“We think, all you need is love.”

“Will I enjoy this new loneliness?”

“Do I make you feel lonely?” the moth asked sadly.

“No, but I do.”

The moth spread its wings and swung around my head again.

I had closed my eyes to the obvious — that a beastly nomad, faithful to its own web, can never capture a swallow. I started to contemplate it again, going back to my simple box in the corner, ignoring the Protestors, but I didn’t know if I had the strength to resist the feathers that enjoyed tickling my ears.

“Look at my great cloak,” I demanded. The moth floated down from the ceiling speckled with mold, stretched its long legs and relaxed for a moment, “Everyone notices it,” I pushed, “but I don’t think you have. Look at how thick it is,” I grabbed a sleeve and pinched it with my fingers.

The moth hummed, touched me with one of its legs and responded, “It is everyone who sees this cloak, but it is a rare person who notices the fragility of it. The seams are unraveling even as we speak, you see those strings? And you are incapable of sewing up the tears and holes.”

“Yes I can!”

“You’re lying again.”

“So what!”

“So plenty!”

I huffed, “I can’t argue with a pea brain like you.”

“Time’s a great healer,” he was whispering now, losing interest as moths typically do.

“Cliché!” I screamed and pondered at him for a minute, “You’re the problem, aren’t you?” And with that, the moth gave up and continued humming his tunes, and stopping to repeat something like, your trouble makes my world go round.