Moths

—finally, it is night and you wrench the bulb from the porch ceiling and all the moths plop to the floor and you traverse the rug of ripped wings and squashed thoraxes and the sounds of your boots pierce my chest but this time there is no blood and the pain I’m supposed to feel is quiet and docile and so, instead of a rivulet of fresh-harvest tears, I tuck my lips in and rise from the splintered chinas and spilled Marocchino you left behind and proceed to gather the ripped wings and squashed thoraxes, dry them over the hearth where we branded our initials onto each other’s chest, where we kissed and I said your lips tasted like frozen Vin Santo and not congealed blood, and then, with the glue I bought for your splintered body-parts, I paste the ripped wings and squashed thoraxes one by one to the wall of the bathroom, just below the black blot that was once you gripping a hilt, teasing your wrist, reciting the Bible verses your mother burned into your head, plunging your fingers into your ears because my voice was something like your mother’s, and my hand on your back was a Leviticus that stung and stung, long, long, long after Jesus died for love and salvation, and you were screaming into things that couldn’t carry your voice, like the bathroom walls and the stained windows and the bunched-up curtains and the barbed cacti outside, and I was waiting for your return the hundredth time, but finally, it is night and you wrench the bulb from the porch ceiling and all the moths plop to the floor and you traverse the rug of ripped wings and squashed thoraxes and the sounds of your boots pierce my chest but this time there is no blood and the pain I’m supposed to feel is quiet and docile and so—