'Fly' by Fu'ad Lawal

The sun is setting. Despair is rising.

He has flown too far from the colony and he knows he can’t make it tonight. The next moon is two nights away. The reptile phlegm of the matter is that tonight is the nupital flight and as it seems, he is going to miss it.

That means only one thing; no mate. No mate means no reproduction. No reproduction, no new colony. One colony less in their ever shrinking numbers.

He just flaps his wings, floating in the darkness.

And then, a few clicks ahead, he sees the light. It looks like a tiny dot at first, and in a few hundred flaps of his wings, the fire rises.

He flies towards it at top speed.

The closer he gets, the warmer he feels and the more alluring the light is. In these split moments, nothing else exists. Not the colony, not the nupital flight, not the colony, not even himself. Now, he has become nothing, no history, no future. All that is is the fire.

His insides burn up as he gets closer. And just before he kisses it, he explodes.

“Whats that crackling sound?” the boy asks his father as they sit round the family camp fire.

“Its the sound of an insect exploding from the heat of the fire,” his father replies, “they think its another light source so they just fly into it.”

“Poor thing,” the boy says.

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself,” father says, “who said that?”

“D.H Lawrence,” he replied. “It doesn’t even feel sorry for itself.”

“There’s no room for self pity, son.”

Fuad Lawalis a poet and copy writer. He blogs at rebelliousflash300.wordpress.com. Follow him on Instagram/Twitter @rebelliousXIV

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