The Observatory of Moths

The hill keeps its stone throat open to weather, a ruined dome breathing rust and rain. Inside, the telescope sleeps like a closed eye, its lens filmed over with moon-dust and thyme.

At dusk the moths arrive, a quiet storm, stitched from attic cloth and streetlamp gold. They circle the old instrument in slow spirals, as if each wing remembers a constellation.

I stand beneath them, the air a soft percussion, powdered with scales that cling to my wrists. Their bodies are small lanterns of insistence, flickering through my ribs like borrowed fire.

When the wind comes, the swarm loosens, threads itself toward the valley's river light. The hill goes dark, but the night keeps humming, a music of departures and small repairs.