An icy little wind devil
kicks up the air in my cube
leans against my left shoulder to read what I write
blows on my soup
peeks under my blanket
keeps making grabs for my toes.
The office AC has summoned him.
Only he who has been granted
the power of the thermostat
can send him back to the ninth circle
from whence he came.
This stemmed from a conversation me and my friends had in a group text.
I am blessed to have the most interesting and creative friends, and our conversations are always something else.
Cowdog Creatives (Hannah) took this picture and sent it to our text group, saying how dramatically it died in the last ray of sunlight.
Another friend said it looked like an Italian opera singer, declaring in song his long-unspoken love to the fair Limoncello with his final breath.
I can’t write opera, but I can write melodramatic sonnets, so I had to join in poking fun at this roach’s dramatic death.
It’s OK to cry.
Fair Lemoncello, golden wings and thighs
No weeping from those scintillating eyes.
I am content that you have heard me speak;
No grief should mar the shine upon that cheek.
What warmth is this that causes my love worry?
A ray of sunlight, yet I cannot scurry.
It lays bare all my tender love for thee.
There is no fear where Lemoncello be.
There’s nothing more to say. My soul is clear.
I cannot stay, my insect queen, to hear
Thy chirped response; angelic though you be
A darker angel draws now near to me.
I do not mind death’s amply lit approach.
Today this nymph developed into roach.
I want this thing in my throat
To grow legs and crawl out of me
I want it to wander the world
And learn wisdom
I want it to ponder the mysteries of the universe
I want it to talk with sages
About God and the meaning of life.
I want it to meet lots of other things with legs.
I want it to go on a shonen training arc.
I want it to come home to me
Wiser, stronger
Fierce brave and bold
I want to see its journeys in its demeanor
I want to be proud of it
Right down to my bones
And I can call it my son
And it will know I am its mother
And then
I can wrap it in a tissue
And flush it down the toilet
But only
After it’s lived a full, full life.
I hope one day
To raise the thing that will best me.
But until that day
This stupid shit will keep happening.
I opened the window long before sunrise. Then I walked through the whole house, looking for anything that they might use against me in the light. A piece of hard candy on the floor could be a fatal mistake.
I had to placate them.
Even though I hadn’t told them anything, my children were on edge. They knew something was wrong. Kids are good at reading their parents.
A small sound in the hallway made me jump. But it was only my youngest daughter, in her footie pajamas, her face screwed up in childish misery.
“Mommy,” she said. “What is that smell?”
“Quiet, baby. It’s just the Visitors. Go back to sleep. I love you.” I held her close so she wouldn’t see my tears. I love you.
By the time she went back to sleep, the daylight was upon us in full force. I hadn’t begun the sacrifice. I hadn’t done enough. It didn’t matter; no matter how much I did, it was never enough.
I hurried to the kitchen and got out the eggs, the bacon, the butter for the sacrifice. They must be appeased.
A fatty thumping on the stairs.
Oh my god oh my god.
And there in the kitchen archway stood a harbinger of the apocalypse, my mother in law, cigarette in hand. She wore a puffy pink robe, which had fallen open, exposing her grotesque choices in underwear and in self-care.
“Where’s breakfast,” she snarled.
The other one would be down any minute. Soon our home would become a hellscape.
We decided to go swimming.
Last day of summer! Let’s take advantage of this heat, we said.
So we went to the lake.
Nobody was in the water.
It was a cesspool.
Fluffy brown-streaked foam collected at the shore
Four feet wide.
As if the lake was a giant boiling cauldron of broth
But someone had neglected to skim the gathering proteins off the surface.
Or maybe the sand decided to have a shampoo
But passed out from the heat
Before it finished rinsing.
The lap lane ropes
Normally cordoning off the deepest area
Had desperately pulled themselves from their tethers
And morphed from a 50 yard rectangle
Into a pathetic oblong.
Even out deep,
The water was soggily crusted with dead insects, pollen,
And gray mysteries.
We looked at it
While summer’s warmth punched us repeatedly in the back of the head.
We decided to run instead.
We walked
We ran
We sweated.
The sun soldered our clothes to our skin.
The humidity held its slimy palms
Over our noses and mouths
As we miserably carried it
On an endless, sweaty piggyback ride.
Our reward, we decided,
Was an ice cream treat.
It melted so fast
We had to drink the last of it.
Sayonara, summer
You had your last hurrah
And my god
We’re ready for fall now.
Sarah D. Silvey 