Dance of the Moth By Farhad Azad July-Sept. 1998 Lemar-Aftaab Watching the rain fall one drop at a time, I pass another dreary, dim day of solitude. My small, dark, damp apartment seems smaller, darker, and damper as each day passes. The rain falls harder. It makes the sound of a grand father clock tic-tocking as each drop falls from the yellow crack on the ceiling and onto the bare, numb floor where I sit. I close my eyes and listen to the chanting of the rain telling an ancient tale to me. I listen, as a child listens to a mother telling a bed time story-- holding on to each word. The story of the rain never stops. It talks and lectures us, but so many of us chose to play deaf to the stories that it tells-- stories of our past and ancestry. I touch my chest, and I don't feel a heart beat. I haven't heard it beat in a long time. I try to image it beating, but again I fail. Yet my blood runs in my veins without a source. Heartless I sit by the window watching the cold world go by, one drop of rain at a time. I touch the cold glass of the window with my frail, ghostly fingers. My fingers feel colder than the glass. A man in the street notices me and stares at me with his audible, gray eyes, lights his cigarette and walks away. The essence of human contact has left me. It is something that I have not experienced in a very long time. Wanting to talk but words that cannot come out. The solitude of my worn out motionless heart has kept me company for days, weeks, months, years. Watching the gray world through a cold window and away from my homeland without a family, a friend, or a countryman. Like the rain that falls, so too does the darkness. I close my eyes. My mind paints a black image without a face, a body, or any shape-- a dark grave. I open my eyes, and the darkness in my mind appears around me. I find my small wilted candle next to me. I light the candle, watching it burn as it drops pearl like tears. Like the poem that I memorized in primary school, I await the moth as its makes its way to its love-- the flame of the candle. But how can it burn itself in the hot flame? Was the love of the flame that great for the moth to become to ashes? Was it mad enough to end its precious life into the open scorching flames of the candle? Yet, the moth finds its true love, and it takes it with open arms. So too like the candle my homeland, my true love, is in flames with its blameless people. Why do I not go towards those flames and become ashes? Is my love not that great? In the shadows a moth appears and performs its ritual dance around the flame. It dances to the tune of a distant flute and drum. In its tranquilizing and hypnotically dance, it gets closer and closer and closer to its loved one swaying, a beat at a time. The mesmerized moth finds its destiny in the open arms of the flame of the candle. It burns to ashes. The dance of the moth ceases. Copyright © 1998 Aftaabzad Publications. All Rights Reserved. May not be duplicated or distributed in any form without permission.