Every few days another moth appears.
I hear them rattling between the window
and rice paper taped across the glass
to hinder the curiosity of addicts. These large
cigarillo-thick animals bang the walls
with their eccentricity and fur, eventually
bumping into the light over my desk where
dust falls from their wings onto the backs
of my hands. I suppose they come
from some crack in the floor, larvae
transformed into an air-borne cigar
so unlike a butterfly’s flying scrap of silk.
I feel less lonely when they come. I imagine
they are asking for help, and I am a hero.
I catch them in a plastic cup and toss them
into the night air from my doorstep.
But then one night it occurred to me
that maybe it’s the same moth over and over,
and I am not understanding
what keeps happening, here, at all.
