Can you hear the cicadas chirping?
Those are cicadas, right? I can never tell.
We’re sharing a Coke, and I don’t want to be the one to finish it,
because I’ve gone off sugar, a little, and because I know it’s the last one.
God, I wish my neighbours would take down that windchime.
I wish city birds knew to steer clear of the road.
I’m losing my focus again, are those really stars up there?
I want to believe it. I do.
I want to keep the taste of pears in my mouth a little longer.
I’ll leave the tea bag in the bottom of the mug,
And fill it with hot water again when I’m finished,
And fill it again, and run the washing machine every day with only one shirt in it.
I’ll gnash my teeth at night,
Chewing on anything and everything I could have said before the door shut.
There’s something psychoactive in coldness, there’s got to be.
Coldness, not cruelty. I’ve never even killed a bug on purpose.
Coldness. Like indifference. The act of detaching oneself, of casually asserting that
I am the one who is keeping my composure.
I am the big, stormy butch with big, black boots and metal in my face.
I am not cracked open, then fizzing, then gone.
The door is shut, and there is nothing cold left in me,
and I’m thinking about the crane fly I accidentally killed last night, and how
I broke down because I know I am gentle.
I know I didn’t mean to. I know that some crane flies feed on nectar, once,
but most have such short lifespans that they never eat at all.
The door is shut,
and it doesn’t open again until about two hours later, when I go out to collect
the Coke can that we shared from the recycling, because I want to keep the pull tab.
When I come back, there is an alate termite crawling on my laptop.
I pick it up as quickly and carefully as I can and let it outside,
and I break down because I know I am gentle.
The world outside has too many rows of teeth to count.
Does the dear little swarmer understand that? Does it know about the fat cats and the
rain that comes out of nowhere to attack you when you’re already so afraid?
Inside, the heater is on, and there are plenty of holes in the wall to hide in,
and there are plenty of pears to caramelise, and I promise I am only mean when I’m nervous.
Alate.
Something with wings, or winglike structures, primarily in reference to insects or plants.
Think about those helicopter seeds that plummet earthward before catching the wind.
Think about how they’re designed to be whisked away to anywhere but here.
Sometimes a small, social insect, like an ant or a termite, will grow wings, lapsing into a new category of self altogether. This happens when the colony has matured and needs to expand.
So, like the helicopter seeds, like the threadbare pigeons and the people who know they are gentle,
they circumnavigate through this toothy hell of a world, unsure of what it even is that they’re chasing,
only that it needs to be something else.
It’s more a trick of nature than any sort of choice—
An elaborate reproductive mechanism so much bigger than any of us.
Humour it anyway, though, yeah?
Take flight, see it through to the end, through rain that beats you bloody and air too thick to tread.
Past birds that hop, birds that walk, past windows into the bedrooms of people stuck playing bad dog.
Find whatever it is that you were fundamentally built to look for.
Let that compulsion to rend yourself to rags finally rest its drowsy eyes.
And when there is nothing left for you to run away from, your wings will flake and fall.
That will be the tender final act of your epic that you have deserved all along.
I want that for you. I want it. I want it.
I want it because I love you.
But I can still hear the windchime,
And this tea tastes of dishwater, and this shirt is dirty again.
My insects are emblematised, my favourite boots polished, but
there are no cicadas this time of year, and those are not stars, and this is not mercy, and
I said nothing before the door shut, and then
I broke down because this is the last gentle thing I will ever write for you.
Featured photo by Jody Confer on Unsplash.
