In a meadow of memories, my mind is a mosquito. It flies from flower to flower, and separates the colors from the petals [1], sucks the warmth from the sun. It finds no house in the darkness, no home in the ever-changing seasons. Flowers cease to flower, but in a memory, they bloom to infinity. The mosquito calls this knowledge, hope. It wears this hope, its home, in the fine fabric of its wings. My mind weaves itself a blanket from life’s moments, hammers in pegs in different places, and pitches a tent. It crouches inside and bathes in the warmth that radiates. It calls this comfort, home.

My mind had grown up ready to pack me, and my life, into a box. It thought that those flimsy cardboard boxes, wrapped twice round with industrial tape, felt more like home, than “home” did. Houses changed, in more ways than it cared to count, and the common factor was the boxes. It, in its youthful simplicity, deduced that my home was hidden somewhere there. The boxes that menacingly threatened mildew when starved of attention, but when you gave them just that, would launch dust grenades that made you sneeze. And my mind had tried to carve out a home amongst them, with box cutters, but the cardboard never budged. Then it attempted to fit my life there, to squeeze an infinite quantity of warmth into a finite volume.

It worked, for a while. As a temporary, makeshift home. One that burst at the seams when the houses stopped changing. My mind then concluded that, if my home could not house my life, I did not need one. It left my belongings strewn across the floor of the soaked cardboard, and looked elsewhere, as comfort oozed away like lava seeping back under the earth’s crust. It left its life in disarray, and banished itself to a desert, as it could not bear to look at trees. It did not want to be reminded of the home it had found, the home that had then abandoned it. It walked around, kicking about loose stones, while the sun pelted heat upon its wandering back. It had never felt colder than there, and it discovered that a place that housed warmth, was not automatically its home.

It went back to thinking that home was somewhere with four walls, and it jumped from place to place. This is how it became a measly mosquito, one who did not know what food source it was meant to look for. It tried to find home in the bottom of cereal boxes, in crates of oranges, and in tins of stationery. But no matter where it flew, it could never find anything concrete to stick to. Nothing had enough grip for it to puncture its proboscis into. My mind found nothing of substance to hammer its roots into. And here – beneath the dried-out cheerios, the stinging orange peels, and the empty ink cartridges – a home was not found.

My house was never a home because it was a cage, and then school became a cage, and then the world became a cage. And in my mind, the only way out of this cage was to become an astronaut. A mosquito’s wings flying through space, dressed in a white, padded, sealed suit. I wanted to find home, to look for it somewhere, because it had to be out there. Somewhere on some planet, maybe Mars, maybe Pluto. It was somewhere. I was adamant. I had searched everywhere else, yet, I had forgotten about the four walls of my mind. The vacant, desolate home that belonged to me. The walls littered with propaganda posters, slogans of all the words that I had heard that had stung enough to stick. The memories scattered in little cardboard boxes, packages of warmth waiting, not to be moved, but to be opened. But the mosquito did not know of these.

In the depths of space, the mosquito heard a faint buzzing sound, a sound that could not be heard elsewhere. It was not the background static of space, nor was it the broadcasts transmitted from nearby spacecrafts. It was not the voices that were pleading for it to come back “home.” The mosquito did not know what to do, since it had no concrete sense of direction in space. So, it simply hoped that it would find the things it was looking for. And a match, dipped into a basin of hope, was struck against the all the resistance that space had to give.

The mosquito’s internal compass sought out the source of the sound. It guided them both out of space, while its eyes remained closed, and led it to my mind. It did not notice the barriers, it did not notice the scaling walls, it simply flew. It did not look around – until its head hit a wall and it stumbled into a stupor, spiraling backwards, downwards, and side to side. Piles of boxes tumbled over. The sky cracked open, no longer withstanding the heat that seeped out from the cages made from cardboard. The mosquito shielded its shut eyes, wings quivering from the warmth, and it dared to investigate the boundaries of the four walls of one box. Inside was a flower, sitting neatly in a mound of earth. It was no less alive than a flower in a meadow, and did not shy away from the glaring lights of the mind.

The mosquito, starved, sucked the color from the flower. The flower’s petals did not wilt, and they stayed raised proud, even though they had faded, even though they no longer emitted a single ounce of warmth. And this mosquito was like all mosquitos. It left this flower, without as much as building it a gravestone or gifting it a goodbye. It inhaled all the colors, cycled through all the boxes, and the mind’s artificial lights could not keep up. The colors swallowed, the warmth stolen, and the light, powered by an external generator, flickered. It mourned the memories the mosquito had mistook for flowers. These flowers would not rebloom.

The mosquito was not exiled. It was simply sent to the gates, and set loose. Left, standing on the doorsteps between the mind and a meadow. Filled with mistrust, and seething with shame, it plucked a petal of the nearest flower. Drained from its nature, dampened slightly by the falling rain, the mosquito pressed the petal against its wings, dumping its hue onto their fine strands. It then drank half a flower’s full of warmth, and tread back to the mind. Doors open, it ran in, knelt beside a box, and planted the flower’s roots into the soil. Nothing happened, the lights still whimpered as if they were cold, but it felt right to the mosquito. A dead flower should be accompanied by a not-yet dying one. It imagined that they might hold hands. It fancied they would be happier that way.

The mosquito flew far. Meadows close-by had grown empty, and flowers became scarcer the further it went. It brought boxes with it, towing tools, and tales behind it. It slept in bogs, and sunk into the heat from the fire that its wings created. Its wings wrapped tight around its body, and it watches as colors ripple across. And even in the darkness, even in the wet, sunken ground, it has a home. A home filled with warmth.

The mosquito flies, fueled by the memory of warmth that lives in its wings. It is entertained by the colors that find a festive hat and entertain any of its lonely emptiness. The mosquito lives in its wings and their warmth, and has a constant companion called color. It always flies back to my mind, armed with a garden of flowers in its hands. And my mind, finally having a living and functioning thing to treasure, fashioned the mosquito a tent. It stretched the strings, and nailed four down. One into space, one into the desert, one into the boxes, and the last into that first meadow. And it listens, while it knits a blanket, to the voice of the mosquito recounting its travels. A blanket weaved with the wool of the mosquito’s life; all the moments it saw. And when the mosquito leaves, my mind casts the blanket over its own four walls. Its house finally has a roof, heat takes longer to escape, and my mind had made itself a home.

One day, the flowers will be too far for the mosquito to fly to. There will be a journey that the mosquito undertakes, but never completes. Its fuel will not last. Only the dark sky will bear eye to its fall, and it will die in the cold. Its wings will flicker, flicker, a dying flame at the end of its match. A gust of wind will come along and extinguish its glowing embers. The mosquito’s home had lived with the mosquito’s life, and without the sound of a beating heart to follow, it could no longer send out any waves of warmth. The mosquito ceases to exist, and its home follows in suit.

The flowers in my mind will still exist, faded, and dried out, all their last color used up for that last journey. And my mind will shiver in the cold, waiting for the mosquito to come back. Waiting for it to tell stories of its thoughts, waiting to hear its wings buzz under the tent when the next morning comes. A sound that never arrives. My mind will wonder why the mosquito did not find a home in its walls, why the tent it had sewn was not filled with enough warmth to entice it to stay. And it will seek the mosquito’s corpse out, and bury them both into its blanket. It reckons the dead mosquito needs a dying companion. And its artificial lights blaze with a natural glare, and both the mosquito and my mind are buried with a home above them.

Note

• Male mosquitos feed on nectar.