Do Microbes Cry

Do microbes cry?

Does minutiae have meaning?

Does a blank 8.5x11 sitting in a filing cabinet since the 80s mean anything? Does it think about what it could be?

Do the moths eating a long-dead great-grandmother’s fur coat feel joy when a sliver of light comes through the crack between the doors of a wardrobe? Maybe joy isn’t the right word. The gutshot of hormones, the electric ganglia crammed behind compound eyes becoming just a little more electric.

When a moth feels that, is it a story to them?

Not,

Can I shove my human emotions onto an organism and call it love, call it heartache, call it hate. Of course you can’t. I am I, moth is moth. Those cell walls haven’t broken down.

But to a moth, that has only known dark, does light mean something? Do they dwell on it, even for a second afterwards? Do they think that was fucking crazy? Do they wonder, in a simple, potato-clock sort of way, do they wonder, will that ever happen again?

Long Neck Gorby sat down at the bar, giving the Moth the side eye. The Moth gave him many tiny side eyes. They drank together in silence for a moment, probably both thinking of something to say.