The Cartographer of Moths

In the kitchen of dusk, a lamp opens its throat, and moths rise like paper prayers cut from the air. They beat their soft alphabet against the glass, leaving a script only the dark can read.

On the table, a map is drawn in spilled tea, rivers curling around the cup’s rim, a continent of steam. I trace the coast with my finger and it burns, a small geography of heat and vanishing.

Outside, the street hums with the low tide of engines. A bicycle leans into the night, its chain a quiet star. Somewhere a door closes; the sound is a seed pressed into the soil of the evening.

The moths settle, the lamp dims, the map dries out. I fold the day into a pocket and feel its edges. Morning will be a different alphabet, but the wings will remember the light.