I have to write a "Literacy Narrative" for English 312, my Persuasive Writing class. Actually, I stayed up til 2am last night writing the first draft. Ugh.
I went looking through my old essays I had saved on my computer to see if some of the essays I've written before would work. (Every single English class since junior year of high school has been exactly. the. same. What's the point?) Unfortunately, the old essays won't work for this class (darnnit) but I did come across this other one I wrote back in the summer of 2009 for English 150. It was a "Personal Narrative" essay. I've always kind of liked it, so I guess you can read it too.
Ta da!
Moths Against the Glass
I watched the fan making lazy circles over my head every time car headlights raced across the ceiling. I held as still as possible, trying to stay cool in the heavy summer night’s heat. I wish my parents would buy an air conditioner, I thought. Holding still wasn’t helping me feel any cooler, so I flopped over on my stomach. This pillow is so flat. And these sheets are so scratchy. I closed my eyes and started counting sheep, but the clicking sound of the old ceiling fan as its propellers spun like the world’s slowest helicopter knocked against my ears, and visions of fields with fluffy sheep disappeared. I opened my eyes, sat up, and pulled the cord, turning off the fan. All it was accomplishing was pushing the hot air around. I lay back down again, staring up at the ceiling once more, watching the blades lose their slow battle against friction. As I watched the blades circling ever more slowly, and noting that I, in fact, did not feel any difference in temperature, my eyes slowly started to close.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
Though I was right at the cliff’s edge of sleep, my eyes snapped open at once.
This summer was the worst for moths. They were everywhere across the state, the population at the highest point it has been at for the last twenty years. They flew out at your face when you shook the curtains or opened cupboard doors. Just last night my father sucked thirty of them right out of the air with the vacuum hose.
I hated moths. They were gray and dirty and dissipated into a poof of dust when I hit them with the fly swatter. Every night before I turned out the lights I made sure my room was clear of them. In my imagination, moths rested on my face while I slept.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The window was pushed open the tiniest bit, which is how the moth must have gotten in. I could hear it hitting its head repeatedly against the glass, probably wanting to get out of this hot bedroom as much as I wished I could. I watched it fluttering against the window, stopping every once in a while, catching his breath and staring out the glass, wondering why, if he could see where he wanted to go so badly, he could not get there.
Stupid moth, I thought. Why doesn’t it just go out the way it came in?
I knew there was no way I would be going to sleep now, not with that moth in the room. But I was so tired, overheated, and annoyed, that I didn’t want to get up and let the moth out.
I listened to it banging its head repeatedly, the thudding against the glass like a muted musical note—a child striking B flat over and over again. The heat sat like an elephant on my body. In my mind, heavy thoughts pressed down even harder. Worries about money, family, and relationships chugged slowly in a counter-clockwise circle in my mind—things that have been plaguing me for weeks. I don’t do well with stress, and this summer before college had me at the Peak of Stress Mountain. Everything seemed to set me over the edge, and this moth was the breaking point.
I lay there in my bed spread-eagled, thinking about everything I needed, everything I wanted, and everything I couldn’t have. Any way I looked at it, I couldn’t see a way to fix things. In most cases, they weren’t “fixable” at all—things just were the way they were.
Another car rolled past the house, and I watched the light grow bright, and then disappear. When I was little, before I understood the way light bends, I thought those lights meant a car was driving straight towards the house. Now that I’m older, that little worry seemed silly now. I listened to the sound of another car; one with a loud engine and music turned up to eardrum-shattering decibels, and then laughed out loud. Maybe I hadn’t grown up at all, if I was worrying about things that I could do nothing about, and, honestly, will seem silly with time. I shook my head clear it of those sluggish thoughts, pushed myself out of the bed, and went to the window to let the moth out.
The moth was gone. I looked high and low for the insect, but it was nowhere on the windowpane or the curtains. He must have finally found his way around the glass and through the slim space. I smiled a little, and then pulled the window all the way open.
The outside night air was breezy and brilliant with shining stars. I looked up and down the empty street, letting the cool night air wash the heat off my skin, wondering where moths went on quiet nights.
