I Notice It First As A Stain

Ahana Ganguly works primarily in prose poetry, the essay, and crochet. They hold an MFA in writing from Pratt Institute. They serve as the submissions editor at Futurepoem Books. Read Ahana's writing in the Michigan Quarterly Review, Provincetown Arts Magazine, Solar Journal, and elsewhere. 

And then as a body upturned. It’s dramatic, splayed out like this: legs split into segments and scattered, wings open in a half-spread, abdomen a paste oiling the bedsheet. The moth’s short hairs beaten together: an uneven texture. 

I wake up and I learn: I slept with a dead moth and I didn’t know it. What we must have shared for those hours afterwards. Me unconscious, the moth dead, our bodies adjacent. For some time both of us were very still together. I wake up and I wonder: maybe our bodies were squirming or flailing. Maybe there was a dream that involved my legs or my torso, my movement in my imagined world flattening the moth. Maybe it was at rest when I killed it, or maybe my movement managed to trap it from flight. I wake up and I notice: my sweat and oils and its short hairs beaten together. This paste makes us into something together, me and the moth. This paste is mostly the moth’s body, and it has some of my body in it. 

How was my blanket configured, I wonder. What arch opened for it to die in. Where was the touching, what was its order: limb then moth then sheet, sheet then moth then sheet. I wonder: where was the touching: where on the bed, where on each of our bodies, where on my body, where on my body. 

I wonder: was my person skin touching the moth while it was dying. I know: it died, and then we both lay there together for the rest of the night. I wake up and I wonder: who are you to die in my sleep. 

The reality is that it died because I was asleep and moved a certain way. I wake up and I notice it: as if I have practiced this banishment so well in waking life that my body knows how to do it while unconscious. As if my person body will always seek to eliminate a pest, even when I’m not awake to see it. I wake up and I am disgusted: who are you to die in my sleep: its pesthood doubled, transgressing two simultaneous sites, both my home and my sleep. I wake up and inside of my noticing is blame, and this makes me into a person and this makes the moth into a moth. This makes a person into something that is not a moth. This makes a moth into something that is not a person. 

The reality is that I don’t know why it flew in. Maybe because I left my indoor light on. Maybe just because here was more air and space continuous with the rest of air and space. And then, with no striving left, maybe it understood the bed as a stable surface, something at rest. Which, in all fairness, is a reasonable assumption. 

I wake up with reason and assumption. I wake up and I am disgusted, and this makes me into a person and not a pest. Making the pest into a pest makes me into a person. 

I wake up and I don’t know why it flew in, so I look it up. I learn: there is a theory. Both the learning and the theory make me into a person.

The theory is that the moths are never trying to get closer to light: really, all they want is to trust that light is distant. This is how they get from one place to another in a straight path. They understand all points of light to be infinitely far away. They understand all points of light to be celestial bodies emitting straight steady rays of light against which they are able to maintain a constant angle. So the moths mistake a desk lamp for a star or a planet. Who could blame them. 

I wake up and I blame them: who are you to die in my sleep. This blame makes me into a person. 

The theory is that when a source of light is close, the moth has to move closer to it in order to maintain its initial angle to the rays of light it is emitting. What ensues is a spiral instead of a straight line. When they wind close enough to feel a light’s heat, it is always a mistake. A moth to a flame is not a moth with a death drive. A moth to a flame is going somewhere. I stopped the moth from going somewhere. 

The reality is that I made the moth into a paste, and this makes it into something that used to be a moth. Being a person-ground paste makes the moth into something more moth than it ever was when it was alive, because it makes me into a person. Making me into a person makes the moth into a moth. 

The reality is that being a person-ground paste makes the moth into something less moth than it ever was and ever will be, because it is mixed in with me and my person body. This makes me into something that is not all person: something that is person and moth: something that is person and something else. This makes me into something. 

The moth stays dead. I wonder. I am disgusted. I think about the mark its body will leave after I wash my sheets. I think about my asleep feet or head resting on a stain.