It’s a cool night in early August. Just soon enough in the season to shake off what we call reality and not late enough to be much bothered by the end of it. When the foliage is so thick that the world becomes twice as dark in the night, twice as hidden. Warm street lamps line the sidewalk, their kerosene burning slowly in the flickering, stained glass. Insects balter around the bubbles of light, and, if you look close, the posts are covered in moths. It’s quiet, too. Save for the eerie echo of rats and raccoons, up to no good. Where they might offer the witching hour an air of paranoia, the chimney sweep drags his feet home, unbothered. He doubles over abruptly, wracked by a smothered cough that brings tears to his eyes, leaving a clean streak down his cheek. He knows the malice of the shadows must pity him—the sticky black soot permeates everything now. As he rests his wire brush back upon his shoulder, a pair of soft brown wings comes to land on his arm. He knows how they feel. If the waning gibbous would show her face, he knows he would be caught as well. The way she would silhouette the old brick buildings, illuminate the trails of smoke carried from distant roof tops. It would draw him ever in, impossibly bright and far. She might be the only thing that keeps him sane when he emerges from those cramped, unlit fireplace shafts onto the city’s canopy. One of the last things that he could still see with the new eyes of a child, painfully nostalgic. Tonight there are thick clouds. His eyes strain as he resists them fluttering closed. Watching the moth depart again, he shifts his weight, falling from one foot to another. He knows that for now, the moon is not trapped in the street lamps, because he can hear her name in the owls. He knows she still watches him from their eyes, from the old oaks, listening.