Moth and Sani’s fraught home lives compel them to draw closer to each other, with the development of their relationship furthering the theme of Friendship and Love as Pathways to Healing. When the school year ends and the summer starts, Moth is feeling hopeful that her life might change. However, Aunt Jack’s unresolved anger and grief compel her to abandon Moth at home alone, robbing her of the adult support, love, and guidance she needs.

Meanwhile, Sani’s complicated dynamic with his white mother and his abusive stepfather intensifies his alienation. Physically battered and emotionally distraught, Sani ends up racing to Moth’s side at the moment Moth is seeking relational comfort, too. The images of Moth running to Sani’s house and witnessing his altercation with his parents, and of Sani running to Moth’s house and finding her shivering alone in her yard after her aunt’s departure, underscore the intersection of the characters’ need. Neither Moth nor Sani has a secure home or family life, but their newfound connection with each other offers them an outlet amidst their otherwise unpredictable and lonely coming-of-age experiences.

Moth and Sani’s decision to leave home on a road trip to New Mexico launches the novel’s exploration of Cultural Inheritance as a Form of Self-Recognition. While Moth’s grandfather has taught her about the Hoodoo tradition and Sani’s father has taught him about Diné tradition, both teens feel disconnected from their ancestral roots at the start of the novel. Moth has actively tried to forget her late grandfather, and Sani is physically separated from his father and heritage. 

As they embark on their adventure across the country, they find themselves forced into confrontation with their ancestral origins. They stop at Monticello and Natural Bridge, landmarks which compel them to reflect on Black and Indigenous histories of oppression. At Monticello, Moth remembers that “You have to bring an offering to a plantation. / For the ancestors” (94) and she and Sani lay coins on the graves there. At Natural Bridge—a site revered in Indigenous cultures as a gateway to the divine—they muse on the place’s history as they physically walk over the landform, which resembles “an ancient giant’s head” (104). In such scenes, Moth and Sani’s physical travels offer them emotional and spiritual gateways to their dormant cultural inheritances. In turn, they end up sharing stories from their respective traditions: Moth tells Sani a Hoodoo ghost story, and Sani tells Moth a Diné creation story. In exchanging these myths, the characters are finding new ways to express themselves and to process their evolving identities.

The recurring references to moths and caterpillars throughout these poems trace Moth’s ongoing transformation journey, forming a key motif. At the novel’s start, Moth explains that moths “Blossom in four stages” (26); the “Egg is nothing special,” “Then caterpillar,” “Cocoon is the miracle” and is followed finally by the moth after “the caterpillar literally melts, sticky & soupy / into slop” (26). These lines imply that Moth will have to leave her self-protective tendencies behind and brave the unknown before she can dismantle her negative core beliefs and remake herself anew. The novel’s opening poems contain repeated allusions to the egg, indicating that Moth is still contained within this “Safe & hardened” (45) state. 

In pages 61-122, an accumulating number of caterpillar references indicate that Moth is transitioning into the next phase of development. Moth decides to see Sani’s car as a caterpillar, “because that makes / the expanse of road in front of us / less death trap, more journey” (82). If the car is a caterpillar, it is a mobile creature able to move from one point to another of its own volition—and, specifically, to move through grief, conflict, and tragedy towards something new. Since Moth is inside the car, she too feels mobilized and autonomous. She is no longer trapped in the egg stage and is journeying towards a new state of being and consciousness. With Sani by her side, she feels empowered to brave life with new courage.

These images, paired with Sani’s creation myth imagery, underscore Moth’s desire to change, despite her enduring grief. Like the First Man and First Woman in Sani’s tale, Moth and Sani are “plant[ing] soil taken from the / Yellow World & grow[ing] things. / They find balance. /They live & live” (121). Together, Moth and Sani are planting seeds of change and healing in each other.