They say the moths come out at dusk. And they do:
white smudges swirling in the porch-light’s tired halo

over dead grass, over the yard where sorrow settles
like pollen. We sit on sagging plastic chairs, bodies

heavy with smoke, with salt, with the prayers
we never claim aloud. Inside, in the linoleum kitchen,

a mother pauses: hands still, breath taut as thread.
Outside, the streetlamp leans on its cracked concrete root,

casting a bruised circle on the sidewalk.
Two moths hover at the window, wings trembling

like radio static searching for a signal.
I watch them beat against the glass, as if listening

for the echoes we try not to hear:
hollow houses breathing, the quiet click of chambers

opening, closing: counting names we dare not speak.

Still, the moths persist, fragile as unspoken mercy.
In the half-light they hover: unsaved, unbroken,

alive. Only that. A sliver of breath in the sinking dusk.

Blink and it vanishes:
a pale prayer smudged against the dark.