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 moth Hours after the storm and still I don’t know why I’m caught on my porch before the body of this moth, big as a plumber’s thumb and bullet-shaped, shoulders covered with fine and surprising fur. Everything about it, down to the crossed and modest-seeming legs, paddle-shaped antennae and the wings slick as variegated satin beckons, holds me to it: the eyes glossy pinheads inside which thousands of small cells bristle, rimmed with gold, rimmed mercury and onyx: a rich multiplicity from which to no longer see the world. It is cold and late, I am tired but cannot stop staring at this shadow growing in my hands, long as a dog’s paw, skin and hair so articulated as to be rippling in stillness. The hollowed belly tapers to a bee-sting point off which only the tiniest gray tuft of hair bursts, as if the body were incapable of defending itself through any means other than deception or pleasure. Which makes the sudden underwings’ tabs of pink more poignant a discovery, a shredding of lipstick, silken powdering. I want to scratch away at it, drag this color with me, paste its scent onto face and hair and clothing. I don’t know why I hesitate to bring it into the house, to prop it on the kitchen table where the light is better, nudging apart its stiff legs. I can’t stop stroking the wicker hooks growing out of its face, imagining how a chain  might be threaded through them and the whole thing worn as a necklace, a charm for the cats that will soon appear, and then the owls, more stars and clouds; even for the moon rolling her stone face up to the black surface. I’m not afraid of death, I’m afraid of all the years leading up to it. Still, I’ll be thinking of this moth all week, and the weeks after, remembering how I wanted to kneel before this ancient furred body, to slip it into my mouth, savoring the heat of whatever last light might have killed it. The moth is frail. It feels like nothing. And the rain withdraws its wet cape slowly from my shoulders as I continue to stand here, looking and looking at what I won’t release, to watch it shake its ice of walkway dust and start once more, back to the lamp on the kitchen porch, to lift again and linger at a source from which there is no dark. ...

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