A moth landed on my lips
And kissed me
I turned into a skyscraper, a rose

A rose is a fire engine
The street is a cup of coffee
America is a big rug puzzle for kids
There is a pit in me

Moths aren’t nostalgic
Moths are flickering lightbulbs
Moths in industrial London got darker
Industrial London was made of moths

Soot landed on my lips
Soot is smeary on my lips
Like newspaper words

More poems should be newspapers
More moths should be soot
More tomatoes should be cherries

Sometimes I don’t want to be in a place that smells like a public toilet
Sometimes I want to land in a heap of ash
Swallowed in a silent cough
Like every moth


Photo by Rúben Marques on Unsplash

Jeremy Johnston

Jeremy Johnston is a Queens-based writer whose work has been published in Grub Street, The RS500, and College Zine Press. His visual work has been shown at The Creative Alliance, the Creative Arts Film Festival (nominated for Best Experimental Short), the Knoxville Film Festival, and the Five College Student Film Festival. Jeremy received a Bachelor of Arts from Hampshire College in 2014.