The Fate of Winter Moths
by Corey Bryan
sitting on the stoop, concrete sodden with the chill of late winter. the air acquires a coolness like your first breath after confessional. the christmas lights illuminate the porch in a motley of whites and oranges. the tangerine glow casting warmth while the sun is taking his smoke break. Two sounds permeate the crisp air rising up to my ears like a swan through inky lake water: the languid boughs sighing in the wind, scraping their emaciated limbs together in contemplation and the fatal buzz of my neighbor’s bug zapper. It stands watch like a plum King’s Guard, never resting in his duty; an amethyst firebrand. The absence of the mosquito’s persistent drone is chilling, and its deafening vacancy amplifies the cruel cut of the bug zapper. In this quiet cacophony I think that letting moths fall prey to an undeserved, mauve, electric death is the cruelest thing I’ve ever known. I creep back up the steps and cast a wary look into my neighbor’s grimey window and am shocked to see them sleeping peacefully.
Corey Bryan is a fourth-year student at Georgia State University majoring in Rhetoric and Composition. He was born and raised outside of Atlanta and resides in Grant Park. He is currently writing daily poetry prompts, along with some original poems, with a friend of his at poetryispretentious.com. He has two poems forthcoming in Sage Cigarettes Magazine and The Bluebird Word. Follow him on Facebook and Twitter.