LUNAR LOVE

One day, Mikey the Moth decided to fly to the Moon.
\"I’m sick,\" he shouted, thumping his fuzzy chest passionately. \"I’m sick of flying into light bulbs and street lights and Christmas lights and store windows and car headlights. Hell, I got a fat singe on my ass from a birthday candle once!\" He began pacing to and fro. The other moths looked at him strangely.
One ventured to say, \"Well, Mikey, since you’re so damn picky....\" Here, the other moths nodded in agreement.
\"It’s not that I’m picky, it’s just... I need someone non-electrical. I need someone natural.\"
They ignored him. He looked unhappily at the lit-up JC Penney sign they were all futilely bumping into, over and over again. He thought to himself, \"It’s just that I need something I can really love.\"
He thought of lights, thousands of lights dotting the city night. Lights unfolding before him in dizzying numbers as he flew, each and every night, to find the right light. Suddenly, he became aware of a presence above him, glowing pearls and wishes. It was the Moon.
He gazed up at this gentle, stellar orb, an astronomical angel, it seemed. How had he failed to notice her before? He was in love.
\"Why do you look so sad tonight?\" he crooned to the Moon. \"Your eyes, so large and dark and beautiful, are shedding tears.\" His mind raced for a good pick-up line. He chose to go romantic. \"Let me wipe away those tears.\" With that, he jumped off the edge of the building, and began fluttering towards her.
It was a perfect night to fly for a moth. He floated through the warm air steadily, and was boosted by a convenient current. He drifted higher, higher towards the wet blue sky. He flapped his wings quickly, for he was excited.
\"Maybe it’s time for me to settle down,\" he pondered. \"After all, I’m getting on over two months old now.\" With that, he began fantasizing.
He would marry the Moon. All the planets and stars would attend the wedding, and sit arranged dazzlingly in two glittering rows. The Moon would be walked down the nightly aisle by God, her Father, to meet Mikey, dressed in a glamorous black tuxedo, buttoned ever so tightly across his furry body. The stunning Sun would be the priest who married them, his solar rays sending a pleasant warmth over the whole scene. When the Moon would say, \"I do,\" her voice would hum throughout the whole cosmos, finally ringing just in Mikey’s admiring ears. On her lunar finger he would slip a ring of frozen gases, whose delicacy far outdid the rings of Jupiter or Neptune. Their kiss would create gravity. Their smiles would erupt into lazy, purple nebulas. Then, they would ride away on a comet, quasars raining down on their heads held tightly next to each other. They would live in a lovely house of asteroids, surrounded by a white orbit of stellar debris. And they would live happ--
--His wings were aching, burning with fatigue. Every flap sent waves of screaming exhaustion through his body, crippling his dreams. The Moon was so far away. He flew and flew, and could fly and fly, and never reach her. She probably wouldn’t care for his odd, crispy legs and brown branched antennae. His wings were dull and dusty. And besides all Mikey’s inadequacies, he had also forgotten one important fact: The Moon had long been wedded to the Earth.
Despair. He let go, and dropped like a dark raindrop onto the pavement three miles below.