moth dust
entries from journals, the notes app, etc. from august 5th to august 8th.
Entry titled “Verminic”, 8/5/2025, 6:45 p.m. In a journal.
My mother keeps killing moths. She doesn’t understand why I don’t like it. It doesn’t really matter; she wouldn’t stop even if I asked her to. She’s got her justifications. I know she does because if I talk to her about new laws surrounding child abuse or why I don’t like something or even suggest that all things might be delicately connected, she makes justifications for why bad things must happen— parents need to protect their children, you need to get over yourself, people need to take care of themselves instead of worrying about things like moths. Well, I’m worried about the moths enough for both of us. I’m worried about the moths! They’re so small, tiny bodies the same color as my hair, crawling around the windowsill to reach for light they’ll never really touch. I feel personally hurt. I feel defensive. I always get like this with animals considered vermin— mosquitoes, rats, ants, wasps. It is a critical failure on my behalf, or so I’ve been told. You’re not supposed to feel like that about things that are supposed to die.
I’m trying to come to terms with the idea that I might be more sensitive than I would like to be, or more sensitive than I present myself as. It’s tricky because everything I feel moves through me so quickly that I can’t catch it and investigate it. The one thing I know about my sensitivity is that it’s the wrong kind— I am bad with other people’s emotions, I am not as nurturing or kind or supportive as I’m supposed to be, I’m kind of a bitch; I cry in my head when someone on the television injures a doll or when someone puts out rat traps or when my mother sits at the window with a fly swatter and kills moths. The only logical conclusion I can come to is that I am closer to vermin than I am to most other people. It gets me nowhere because my mother is still killing moths and I am still worried about them. Small violence kills me. Big violence, too, but not nearly as much. You can hit me and I won’t even tear up. Let’s not ask why at this time. Let’s save the questions for later.
Insects are my friends. I am an insect. Everything is an insect to something, as long as you’re not talking about the taxonomical definition of the word “insect”. There is always something bigger than you that, depending on how irritating you are, may or may not want you dead. I’ve been stung by a yellow jacket on two separate occasions during this month, but it wasn’t their fault. I scared them; it was on me. Mosquitoes and spiders don’t even bother me anymore— when I was thirteen, I mind-over-mattered myself into bug bites no longer itching, so they just leave little sensationless red bumps that disappear within a few days. Of course the moths are perfect darlings. If I had the money for it, I would find a good house— lots of old, fragrant wood, away from other people— and give the moths and the bees and the rats a place to stay. Because I want to. Because I feel like it. Because I think they should survive and be happy. I think what I’m saying is that I want to live. Funny how I keep saying that but never make any progress in that direction.
Entry titled “Dirty”, 8/6/2025, 12:28 a.m. In a journal.
I keep walking down the long driveway late at night to lay in the still-hot dirt and look at the stars and throw everything in my head outside of myself so I don’t have to touch it. What’s the worst thing that could happen to me right now? Coyotes come to take me? I get hit by a car that’s not supposed to be there? A satellite falls out of the sky and lands directly on top of me? Irrelevant; I’m not going to die.
I leave here in under a week. The thing I will miss the most, aside from the wind and the way the bathtub looks, is having a nice patch of dirt to lay in. I’m at my best when I’m in the dirt. I’ve been told I was obsessed with mud as a child—apparently, if I was let loose in a beautiful grassy field, I would always manage to find the one patch of mud and completely cover myself in it. I’ve got dirt on my face in most of my childhood photos and I’m in the dirt now, so I believe it. I don’t remember it but I don’t need to. Echo of a memory like a stain on me. Them’s the digs.
The interesting part about trying to empty my head is that it never works. It’s more about turning off the translator than it is about truly getting rid of things, though, so that’s alright. I want to listen to what my head sounds like without hearing what it’s saying. Mostly, it’s a variety of different types of high-pitched drones that, along with very faint words or phrases in the background, are able to communicate multiple sentences at once through changes in pitch and texture. It sounds like a choir of angels. When I think about nothing, there are angels in my head. This is very bad. Maybe that satellite will fall out of the sky just to stop it from happening to me, or if it won’t, maybe it should. Don’t even know what to do about it. It’s always been like this— despite being what it is, if it changed now, I would be frightened. I might even cry. That could be interesting, though. I might quit therapy (she’s said multiple times that she doesn’t know how to understand me; I also don’t think anything about me can be healed as long as I live here) but I’ll try to get a recommendation for a psychiatrist or something. Magic pills 2 save my life 4ever. Yay.
Oh, whatever. Obviously I’m back, now— no point taking a notebook with me down a road where I can’t see anything— so I’m losing threads. I am bad twine; I am the color of dirt. That much is true. My skin and hair have been slowly fading into the landscape. I don’t want to go back to the city but I don’t really want to stay here. I don’t want to be anywhere. I want to be alone. I’m going to pack some dirt to come back with me.
Untitled entry, 8/7/2025, 2:51 p.m. In a notebook.
Over and over I wake up and stumble into life. Days come easy and go easier. It’s disgusting. Nothing comes to me because I want it. Trying to dig a hole right into me just so I can receive something but it doesn’t work. Water washes right over me and fills me back up. If this is what I get, I don’t want it. I need a new ocean. I need a new shore. I need to throw out the whole container and try again with something that’s fresh and new and functional. That would scare me, though— all change frightens me; I’m trying to stop it but it’s not working— so I’ll have to keep moving with this one. I keep praying for the bugs at night. I can’t stop thinking about them. I want them to be safe more than I want anything else right now, which is unfortunate, because I don’t think bugs are truly safe anywhere in the world. Desire is stupid. Isn’t everything?
I should be less of a cynic even if I’m saying it with love. I love everything. I love the whole world, even though it’s terribly unsafe for all the beautiful bugs out there. I think I love like Jesus. I should be less grandiose, too, because surely that’s not true. I don’t trust my own self-opinion. This is because I’m a liar.
Entry titled “Smiley”, 8/7/2025, 11:13 p.m. In a journal.
I make myself laugh because I kick and scream and put up a big fuss about being stuck in a dreamland, in a sort of fishbowl or other place hidden away from the world, and then wish for the dream to come back any time I have to reckon with where I really am. Easy to say I’m self-aware when I’ve got distance from it. If I get too close, I shut my eyes and plug my ears and say lalalalala like a child, because I am, and my mother was right about me not being a real adult. Three years doing nothing. Everything but my shoes is going to be taken away— death to the mind and body, long live the ruby slippers. Everything will be taken from me. Everything will be taken with me. I lack spine, I lack discipline, I lack a stable constitution to endure things like making effort. I am going to run away to be with myself and find that there’s no one there.
Thinking of the statue of Mary with her hands snapped off that used to sit on our mantle. A reminder. Her hands sit in the bird nest with her bird son, who is not a bird, but might as well be. Mary’s son who asked the birds to forgive him. Ocean in the musk-sweat dusky feathers; I keep seeing her broken hands around his face like a cradle. Even when she’s not there she still touches him. I wish things had less obvious meaning to me, that I could stop seeing it. No I don’t. Yes I do. I would die. I should be launched into the fucking sun.
And all of that is irrelevant. What does matter is the fact that I caught myself smiling in the mirror and saw that my mouth only moved upwards on one side— a dead ringer of my father’s smile. My father smiles like that because his head was slammed into the ground by his brother as a teenager and the impact killed some of the muscles in his face. Now I smile like that presumably because my father smiled at me as a baby, and I, too young to want independence, learned what happiness looks like from a man with a partially-dead face. The wound carried to me. I think I’m afraid. Earlier today mother listed the things she hates about him to me and then told me that I have to be careful or I’ll be just like him. I think I already am. For the millionth first time, it’s dawning on me that I don’t actually want that.
Hands on my head from one side, strings on my wings from the other. Locked down and fixed on. I think I could get free but the issue is that if I was free from it, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself. Reenactment? Reiteration? And the scar on my chest seems to have finally disappeared for good, but the youngest part of me knows that only means I’m not safe from death anymore. Wish wish wish wish wish. I have nothing to say. I want to go home.
Untitled entry, 8/8/2025, 3:47 a.m. In the notes app.
Dreamed we were married last night. Walked down the aisles of a general store between you and my fiancé. Teddy bear lined processional. I was going to marry him but of course you had me first. Hand at the back of my neck. Endless rows of soda. Came over and sweeted me out with ice cream and leftovers. Hard not to feel bought. Know you're lonely. Know you want love. Know I'm easy access. She doesn't like it when I tell her you're often vulnerable. Don't think she likes me at all. Don’t know if it’s worse for you to like me or hate me. Bad things are going to happen to me. I am going to be punished. Lashes I feel, etc. You're trying to win over a stray cat. I don’t have enough faith in you or the way you talk to think you won’t react badly. Not a fan of this possession. In my dreams (the other ones) I will one day possess myself or be scattered so far across all the world that I am unpossessable. I also dream of rescuing moths though so I know that some things will just never happen.