I was toeing at abrasion-smeared pebbles on the edge of the stream that had once been a substantial riverbend. I knew a moth perched on my shoulder blade, fluttering skeletal wings, but slowly, as if cautious. I feared it was admonishing me. I lept forward to try to break free and scanned the shore for an escape. I hurled myself into the frigid water, thinking it would be too paper-thin to follow. The current swept at my ankles but remained so crystal clear that I could watch the arch of the moth sweep up against the crescent moon. It pinned itself against the bark, where it then disappeared, ever so briefly a leaf itself. It all swept up in an inhale to brush stemmed antennae against the branches. The trees were swaying, dizzy with movement, as the moth joined the entangle. It began gliding higher than their crowns, tripling their height, as if gloating. Then it plummeted down toward the stream. I wrapped both hands around the nearest stone. It had been eroded far too long to be heavy but was sizable. I worried that the moth would sense the threat, so I held it against my chest. When its tailed wings cloaked the dusk, I knew the moth was overhead. The horizon didn’t return. The moth was ready to outlive the night. I don’t know how I swallowed it unabridged or when I had exposed myself in the first place. Did it enter through my clenched teeth or simply pass through the bubbled skin of my throat? Its mouth was like the mouth of the river, starving and devouring. There it was, curled in my lung. Consuming. I was suffocating. The moth outshone even the moonlight.