I had planned to go to bed early, but I am still awake. I cannot stop thinking and I notice a moth convulsing around the light outside my window, hideous in its fragility. I am at home. I am plain and nothing has changed. I am not a college student, struggling to pay for everything, balancing 18 credit hours and a part-time job. I am not inescapably sleep-deprived, and I have not made a thousand small, stupid, costly mistakes. I do not have a roommate or a network of support sprinkled lightly over the country like flecks of toothpaste on a mirror.
This is when I harbor my thoughts worth thinking. This is when I sound like an artist, when I have enough time to sing in the shower, instead of eating M&M’s for dinner and forgetting to shave my legs. I am wearing a sombrero that is broader than my shoulders and it is morning. The sun sears my retinas ever few minutes when I turn my head at a certain angle and it shines thru the holes in my hat. It is jarring and I whip my head away from it. It rises inexorably. Suddenly I am the moth, drawn, drugged, towards the sun. We meet halfway…
I shine warmly and things grow. What I have become I held in fear and awe, and I can see from my new vantage point that the sun is sloppy, ejecting random spumes of stormy flame. I boil and froth. I am alive.