Christine Barker

The moth inside my ceiling light

lies there still, baked by the heat.
her silhouette of tightened wings,
six legs at six angles extending from her head
like braids on the head of a Ndebele doll.

Downtown in Cape Town, I saw Ndebele dolls being sold
by migrant artists from Zimbabwe. My friends were shopping
for authentic souvenirs of rural South African life.
While bargaining, they intimated such disappointment.
We would not get to Mpumalanga:
the province where Ndebele women
paint prayers on their houses and fences.

The black round head on top of the black cone body
Two wide eyes laced with bright beads and white thread
Do Ndebele girls play with dolls that come without a price tag?

I don't want to consider why
this doll wouldn't have a mouth,
or arms or legs of her own.
Nor do I want to recite a dry statistic:
even today, one in three visitors
to the Mpumalanga antenatal clinics
bears HIV in addition to a fetus.

I don't want to imagine how
the moth got in there or
how she crawled and crawled
and crawled up the slick sides
until her crisp body slipped
finally to the bottom of the bowl.

Could she see me through the glass?