Ciclo XXX

The candle flame and the hand share a single tremor tonight — I cannot tell where mine ends and the light’s begins. A moth has settled on the window’s inner ledge, wings folded into a shape that is not quite a leaf, not quite a prayer. I have been watching it for the space of three wax-drips, and it has not moved, and I have not moved, and something in this mutual stillness feels like an agreement neither of us signed. The French call it papillon de nuit — night butterfly — but this is no butterfly, this is a small brown forgetting that arrived because the flame was here. La grazia — not the arrival, but the staying. My hand, still now, for a moment.