Atlas of Moths

In the attic the air is a held breath, beams stitched with cobweb, a small vault of dust. A moth lifts from a cedar coat like a note released from a pocket, pale and unannounced.

Outside, the streetlamps hum their amber weather, each circle a pond in which light forgets it is light. Moths arrive like soft punctuation, like commas the night keeps making, unsure of the sentence.

I think of the maps we draw on the inside of our ribs, routes of warmth, the old sugar‑roads of childhood. Every wing is a geography of fragile ink, every turn a refusal to be kept.

By morning the glass is freckled with their sleep. They close themselves like a book of small weather, and the day, bright and blunt, turns the page. I stand there holding the hush they left behind.