A short story by Madeline Cho
We met, both a little drunk, in the kitchen of our mutual friend’s cramped apartment. A moth had flown through that window above the sink and was circling the old yellow chandelier, its wings making a soft brushing sound you insisted could be heard over the din of the party. So we planted our backs on the floor, knees bent, gazing up at the moth knocking clumsily around the box of a room we were in.
In any other circumstance I would stay well away from a moth-inhabited kitchen. Something about the bug had always rubbed me wrong; perhaps it was their fat, furry bodies or how they could always find their way inside no matter how hard you’d try to keep them from doing so. Granted, I would not, in any other circumstance, lie elbow-to-elbow with a near stranger on the floor, but there I was.
Let’s let it out, you said.
The moth danced, unbothered by its audience, casting shadows above us like our own private show. Best seats in the house.
I fixed my eyes on the ceiling, knowing that if I turned my head ninety degrees to the left I’d catch you glancing at me and our eyes would meet and I’d start to see you differently. Already I imagined you gingerly scooping up the little bug in a way that wouldn’t crush its papery wings, and I would open the back door and watch you free this poor helpless thing, almost jealous of the bit of care it received.
Instead of looking at you squarely, I swayed to my feet and waved my arms in an attempt to make you smile and to coax the moth outside, successful only in the former. We jumped and laughed like kids, and suddenly, for a second, I could imagine a younger you — braving the sting of a scraped knee, prying apart the sections of an orange to give to your friends, loving your parents so truly and innocently before you really saw them as people. Youth flashed across your face and I wished deeply that I could have known you back then, known you longer and better. We wouldn’t have our first kiss until July became August, when I stuck my head through the driver’s side window as you dropped me off at home.
In the middle of our giggles, the moth had slipped out between the glass pane and the chipped windowsill back into the star-filled night. You led me hand-in-hand out the kitchen door and watched, speechless, as the bug found its way to a brighter light in a different window. We lingered outside, pressed in the two-foot gap between the exterior apartment wall and the neighbor’s wooden fence, knees barely touching. It was deep into the summer, but the misty breeze from the Pacific cleaned out the heat of the day in a way that felt like rebirth.
