back to Issue 17
by Kenton K. Yee
A traveler thinks he’s a white moth pressing his buggy eyes against glass as if the two blurry slits of light in the distance were bonfires encircled by flutterbys frolicking among fabrics of sweaty dresses. He figures, whether he had passed through one slit or both, somewhere on the other side is his heritage. But he can’t remember the other side or passing through either slit or splitting in two to go through both. Who knows how he wound up trapped behind this glass cage? Why did he cross the wall? Why did he veer into this glass cage? If only he had veered upwards, he’d be coasting or perched high up looking down now, positioned to play and procreate. O, why didn’t he veer upwards when he had a chance?
As far as he can recall, no moth or mentor directed him this way. He must have chosen on his own. Maybe, he thinks, I was following moths ahead of me. But I’ve never been a follower and I don’t remember following any moth. In any case, they’re probably all looking down now and laughing at me. I have no one to blame but myself. He swallows and swallows but the pebbles in his throat won’t go down. He flails his wings, a ray entangled in a fishing net. He can do only two things now: look back through the glass or look up at the light. Only I know how I feel, he thinks. I’m no longer a traveler but something collapsed. Time has done its job; dust is hot on my wings. Light inside the sky bulb, please let me in.
Kenton K. Yee has placed fiction and poetry in The Kenyon Review, The Threepenny Review, RHINO, Quarterly West, Southeast Review, Puerto del Sol, LIT, Los Angeles Review, Hobart, PANK, Passages North, and other journals. Kenton holds a PhD in theoretical physics from UCLA and law and economics degrees from Stanford. He writes from Northern California.