Mosquito Starlight

The wet metal roof has a lip where old rainwater pools, catching the reflection of midnight above. A puddle of stars cools in the lip; it is the little mirror pond of a manmade valley. The fragile pinpoint light dotted across it vibrates with the metamorphosis of mosquito larvae. One pushes the surface tension in spawning, making a hill out of a dot of starlight, and its wiry legs emerge first, borne from the stellar egg. It breaks the sheath of brightened water and spreads its delicate, glistering wings in the night air. One by one, motes of starlight rise upward and reflect back into the constellatory sky, the wings of mosquitos alight over rainwater.