TRAGIC Poem: AFTER THE MOTHS CAME, by Lindsay Liang

I returned—
not in dream this time.
A cracked floor remembered a chipped tooth
I was lucky to lose.
So I knew:
this was my house.

Last night,
moths came again—
marble-bodied, almost human,
dragging themselves in a line.
They shook,
softened,
grew feathers from their backs.

Their mouths dripped yellow,
eyes hollow.
When they tried to speak,
powder blew out,
fine and dry.
I could not move.
I was one of them.

The house rocked—
was it sea, bed, ambulance?
Something unnamed
was being pulled from me.
I lay like a husk,
a vessel post-purpose,
my mind floating
behind sirens and glass,
watching green blur by.

They said I lost blood.
My heartbeat climbed,
then fell.
Darkness arrived.

When I awoke
I held a child,
white-wrapped, soft-skinned.
His eyelash twitched.
Too tightly swaddled, maybe.
I searched for a hospital.

They told me:
go back.
Back to house,
to country,
to name.

I held him tighter.

My fingers began to change.
Middle and ring.
Under the skin,
fetal shadows bloomed.
When I made a fist,
they rose—
little bones,
pink like tender fruit.

A woodpecker knocked.
I did not move.

Evening came
in a room of moving flesh.
We passed a buoy.
The cloths came off the dead—
they wept red tears.
You floated,
rope between your teeth.
Mine? Yours?

I kissed a swollen man.
His skin, thin as plastic wrap,
peeled under my lips.
I pressed it back.
“I’m sorry,”
I said
to the air.

Then, a room without corners.
Mold breathed in the walls.
My thighs wore paint.
The bed was stained.
The world:
metal warmth,
bones stacked like pastry spirals.

Once,
I wanted you
inside my world.
Later,
I wanted revenge.
Now,
I only want to stay in yours.
Even if it’s only a dream
I can’t wake from.

I laid my head on your lap.
You left no mark.
The sheet remained cruelly flat.
I shook you—
you swayed,
light as breath.

You said:
Go.
Bleed from your fingers
until it becomes meaning.
Or draw a square.

So, I drew a square.