Competition Twenty-Nine Highly Commended: The Cosmology of Moths by Nish X. Hegde
The moths arrived the night I abandoned God.
First one pressed, trembling, against the pane. The desk lamp that called it reflected in the glass between us like its crown. Then another. Then dozens. My accidental congregation.
Our priest once said faith meant endurance. In truth, he was her priest: but I was hers, so he became ours. Once, I believed him, but now I knew he was wrong. Endurance was just a nice way to say waiting in pain.
Moths never wait. They just fling themselves towards radiance. If one found a bonfire, it would cheerily conclude incineration was a form of applause. For moths, Paradise is an accident of wattage.
When my mother died, her priest said she’d met glory. I said glory looked like loneliness to me.
Three nights I wrote nothing at that desk before I finally opened the window. Thousands swarmed me, paper wings suffocating me in frenzy. They bruise constellations on my lungs until they buried me. Then all was still.
They were gone by morning. When I staggered upright, I suddenly hunched over and violently retched, sputtering coughs of silver powder on the sheet upon the desk. When I was empty, I called the priest.
In the eulogy, I said I’d never believed in divine geometry before the moths. Their orbits torn from heaven circling bulbs. The clockwork of their quivers ticking steady until night. The symmetry of their bodies built by larvae born from death, the journey no-one taught them to make arcing into light.
Everyone clapped. People don’t risk it when it’s delivered from a pulpit.
Unseen, in the transept, I glimpsed a single moth meet votive and ignite in vivid light: a martyr. There, between its choosing between being and not-being, I saw–perhaps, just briefly–my mother’s smile.
Nish is a London-based writer and graduate of the Universities of Edinburgh and Melbourne. His writing encompasses poetry, essays about economics, flash fiction, and short stories. He is currently editing his debut novel, Little Blasphemies, an excerpt of which won The Book Edit Writers’ Prize.
His work explores themes of identity, social position, and self-discovery with a dark and incisive voice. An early reader once summarised this fiction as being about ‘depressed people taking drugs and being gay.’
Illustration by Nish X. Hegde
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This story touched something raw in me and the visualisation engulfed me. I felt a sadness and yet a strange acceptance of it. It’s got some great lines “There, between its choosing between being and not-being,” left me pondering for a while. Also I found “People don’t risk it when it’s delivered from a pulpit.” provoked thought. If only we could find “the radiance to fling” ourselves to and find our own paradise! Excellent story!