I feel the wings flutter under my skin as I tell them
about my childhood, about how things were before
I had children of my own. I hint at the type of insect I was
make it more beautiful-I was a butterfly, a damselfly
a fluorescent leaf-hopper, something amazing.
Because they’re my children, I can tell they believe me
that right now, they’re imaging me as
a lime-green lunar moth, wing soft as down
not the chitinous beetle I really was
brown and dull and unimportant,
scuttling from one crack to the next.
Holly Day has taught writing classes at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, since 2000. Her poetry has recently appeared in Tampa Review, SLAB, and Gargoyle, and her published books include Walking Twin Cities, Music Theory for Dummies, and Ugly Girl.
Photograph by Wren Tuatha, Spoutwood Faerie Festival, Glen Rock, PA.
califragile.org 
I really like this poem about identity. I certainly understand a need to protect identity and used the Luna Moth myself in such fragility of self in my novel in verse “Slave Moth”
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