This morning, after pouring tea, I laid down the spoon beside the rack where the hand-utensils hang to dry, and thought I saw movement on the small shallow dish I keep underneath. I slid the saucer out and there was a moth, its wingspan about that of my two thumbnails side by side, struggling in the puddle left over from last night's washing-up, her gorgeous wings trapped against the surface, tiny legs racing hopelessly. I felt her panic loosen my own limbs, but I was also transfixed by the dark glory of the candle's light upon her glimmering pinions, a phrase I heard clearly pronounced in my mind as I watched, unable to move.

The mug slipped from my hand and burst on the floor, releasing me from the spell; I seized the dish and hurried with it to the open window, where I flung its contents out into the still-dark garden. The trail of water flashed in the moonlight, and I heard it land softly on the grass of the path.

For a long long time I have been unable to weep, but I wept then, great gulping sobs, and I am weeping still, though it's not so violent, as if I went over some cataract into a gentle stream. It feels — I cannot tell why — but it feels like deliverance, like that poor moth's, if she wasn't destroyed by being pitched into the void like that. I have no trouble imagining, if she did survive, what she felt, to be ripped loose from the grip of drowning, then to plunge through the dark, and find herself suddenly safe — maybe, though injured, even able to fly.

My exile is over.