It was stuck against our screen porch door. In the low amber light, the wings radiated a brownish-red sheen, glistening in the past midnight air. It was a moth I’d never seen, gigantic, unlike others my sister had injected and tacked open against wooden slanted boards.
Tommy reached out toward it in slow motion.
“Don’t touch it,” I blurted. “It won’t be able to fly.”
He moved his head closer. “I think it’s dead.”
I noticed the minute black hairs on Tommy’s neck. The fringes of the moth’s mantle. The waxing moon reached through the oaks and I felt like I could never marry this guy.
“It’s alive,” I said. Wanting to believe we were, too. “Let’s go inside before we turn to dust.”
