Semaphore

It now was winter and the moths were all dead,
just when he had need for their metaphor.
He and the woman in the yellow kitchen,
unable to hear themselves. Beating
at something between them.

If it were summer, he thought,
this would not be happening. The moths
would be at the windows, their wings
clapping the glass, antennae scraping the panes
at the unspeakable distance between
themselves always and the light.

And he would point to them and she
would understand, would look up from the knife
and cloves of garlic on the cutting board,
those bulbs like fire across the wood,
and would understand.

Behind them, the stars ticked down the sky
in their nightly failure. He noted their semaphore:
thin bands of light, combustion. And he went quiet.