I thought it was dead, the moth pressed against the lantern’s glass,

wings scorched to gray, body trembling like a leaf

forgetting its branch. But there it was—

a stammering of flight, a refusal to fall completely.

O ashy wings still fluttering, what do you seek

in the ruin of light, what prayer stirs from the dust

of yourself? I have known that flutter that is

not flight, but memory aching toward the thing

it once trusted, not hope, but the body refusing

to be all quiet. I promise you, some things

do not rise like fire; they crawl out

of ember, sliced-shadow, sliced-breath,

dragging their ache like ash. Once, I watched

my neighbor blow gently on a dying coal,

her breath a soft insistence: stay, stay,

even if you are no longer flame. I think of that now,

watching the moth drift sideways through

the windless room, its wings torn but still

lifting, still opening as if to say:

I am not done with this burning.

O fragile persistence, O soft ruin,

O beauty that does not need to be whole,

let no one say you didn’t try, let no one

call this anything less than survival.