"Moths. They're like depressed butterflies. Ridiculous things, don't you think? Winged tragedies, really."

The air is full of tragedies this evening, and I don't even dare to move. I'm all long-limbed and gawky, you've said it before and you will say it again. They break very easily, silly little things. If you touch them, even if you touch them only once …

"Just look at the lampions. Why is it that they're so attracted to light?"

They put up beautiful paper lanterns in the shapes and colours of children's dreams. I have no eyes for children's dreams. You told me to start acting my age and I will, no more lollipops and bedtime stories for me. Have you ever heard the sound of burning moth wings? I would like to say that it's the most final thing I know, because it's poetic, but it's not true. And I'm not so much attracted to the light. I'm …

"Stupid. They're just so stupid." It's just that. Your laughter, the most final thing I know. The strange sound that comments yet another cruel absurdity of nature, like tiny bodies swirling through the late summer air, ablaze, like me thinking I'd actually mean something to you. I feel slightly light-headed, it reminds me of the one time you told me not to breathe, and I didn't. And you laughed as if you knew that I would go through anything for that sound.

Eventually, one of them has to get caught in my hair, just for the morbid joy in your eyes as that breath of a life ends next to my ear. Just for the feel of crumbling wings between your fingers as you pull it out, "Look at it." You know I don't want to. Looks like rumpled candy wrappers. You laugh.

"That's what happens when you get tangled up. You get crushed."

Your heart is like a black hole, like a cemetery. It's where all my thoughts and dreams, my fears, my hopes and wishes cease to be. It's not like the lampion, there is no false comfort. It's like the flame. And eventually it will consume everything I am. But I'm not struggling, it's not like I can help it anyway.

I've heard your words and I can taste the threat, the anticipation. You've probably been planning it all, because you know where the strings are and you know how to pull them and because I'm perfectly predictable. What a spectacled tragedy I am, really. A lost cause. There's one thing to take solace in though, one thing that separates me from a moth. I know what you want. I know how to read your face and your voice and the pattern of your breathing.

I know what you want, and you want to …

"Crush me."

Just to see your eyes light up; the flame, the fire, always insatiable. I'd go through anything for that.