moth

It was only four hours later, in the eleventh hour of the ninth of May, as the dryer clicked and droned downstairs and she sat beside her bedroom window reading, that Lusa's life turned over on this one simple thing: a potent rise of scent as her young husband reached out his muscled arm for a branch of flowers. Here was what she'd forgotten about, the full, straight truth of their attachment. Her heart emptied of words, for once, and filled with a new species of feeling. Even if he never reached the house, if his trip across the field was disastrously interrupted by the kind of tractor accident that felled farmers in this steep country, she would still have had a burst of fragrance reaching across a distance to explain Cole's position in the simplest terms conceivable.

Lusa sat still and marveled: This is how moths speak to each other. They tell their love across the fields by scent. There is no mouth, the wrong words are impossible, either a mate is there or he's not, and if so the pair will find each other in the dark.

For several more minutes her hand lay motionless on her book while she considered a language that could carry nothing but love and simple truth.

~excerpted from Prodigal Summer by barbara kingsolver

one day, several months ago, haley said to me, 'i've heard that with the wrong person you can't say the right thing, but with the right person, you can't say the wrong thing..and i never understood it until now.' that was the first time i'd heard it put quite like that, but i agreed.

no editing. no hesitating.

natural.

maybe there is something to the language of the moths. maybe it is scent. maybe it is chemical.

organic.

sentences finished for me. my thoughts put in words by the right person. a language of connection.

undoubted.

d: deep breaths.
b: i speak moth.
g: so does haley.