Non-Fiction

I opened the spine to page eighty-one,

a place I stopped four winters ago.

I thought it was lack of time, or the sun,

or the way that the plot had started to slow.

But there, in the gutter, a moth lay flat,

its wings turned to powder, its body a stain.

A brittle, gray witness to where I sat

when the world outside became louder than rain.

I couldn't follow the sea or the stars

when the taxes were due and the radiator hissed.

I traded the magic for medicine jars

and the simple, dull weight of a life that is missed.