Regret and Wet Wings

I think I’ve done something wrong, touched something that didn’t want to be touched, and I cannot pretend that I didn’t want to, because I’ve done it now.

She was a moth, a real live ghostly white moth on the wet bike path pavement, fluttering helpless, one rainsoaked wing stuck to the ground. I stopped and watched and thought that I couldn’t do anything and continued talking to my friend with the contented notion that I would be useless here. And then an inconvenient pang of guilt weaseled its way into my stomach and I decided that I couldn’t just let her die, rugged-terrain treads zigzagging over her thorax as she lay there, defenseless. I turned back. I crouched down. And I tried my darnedest to coax her onto my finger. I felt a quiet triumph when those antennae felt the crook of my index finger and she slowly ventured up onto my hand: she trusts me. In truth, she probably just thought I was a handy twig or blade of grass, something to move her to higher ground, but I felt accepted in that moment by this tiny, frail, desperate creature. She had deemed me safe. From there, my friend instructed me to place her on a hearty sprig of milkweed. This is where things became complicated. Playing the savior, it turns out, is significantly easier than truly being the savior; being takes follow-through. Being the savior means not removing the moth from one quandary only to place her in the path of catastrophe.

Upon that milkweed leaf I attempted to set the moth gently down. But alas, her damp wing stuck to my finger. I tried to gently pry it off. My friend chastised me: “Don’t touch the wing!” I felt angry; I had no alternative method. If I hadn’t touched it, it would have certainly torn clean off the moth’s body when I placed her down and removed my finger. The wing would have stuck to me, and forgotten her, its owner. A traitorous wing indeed.

When I finally did remove my finger, her wings still safely attached to her body, she tumbled down, off the milkweed, into the grass. It was my friend’s turn to play savior. She placed the moth on her finger and guided her up to the milkweed again. And again, the moth’s wing stuck to the human hand. My friend attempted to place the moth onto the milkweed without touching the wing. It bent at an unnatural angle. I felt like criticizing her this time: See, it’s not as easy as it seems! Do you really think your method is better? Eventually she gave in and touched the wing, unsticking it from her finger. It hung uncertainly from the moth’s thorax, clinging to a body not quite anymore its own. It looked heavy with rain, an alien deadweight twisted from what it once melded onto naturally.

We stared at the moth afterwards - alive, safely embracing the milkweed, but looking like not quite a moth. We turned to each other. We laughed nervously, powerlessly. The mist thickened into a drizzle, and we, two mock saviors, walked quickly to the river to forget.