The Life Cycle of Moths

Sometimes I wonder why she didn’t kill us
when she had the chance.

Why she didn’t smoke or drink,
or take the drugs fashionable then.
Why she didn’t drive the car
into guardrails, embankments –
bursting her belly
against skull of steering wheel.

Somehow it happened,
and if you could have seen inside her,
you would have seen us:
small, woven into her underbelly,
miniature women still without fur,
moth-hands clutched together,
praying even then.

First appeared in the North American Review.