Beetles

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(8) We are at a campsite in rural Arizona and she asks me to throw a bit of paper into the firepit, and so I do it, because I learned very young that when I was told to do something, to do it like the oldest oak would do it and never argue. I did it. But I did not crumple up the paper and that was the wrong flavor and she said to do it again, but I couldn't reach the paper, so I side-stepped like a saloon boy into the dry ash to reach for it, foot screaming like a bad demon. Then: only blisters, raw skin, shallow breathing, lying on an army cot, speaking to the bright stars like best friends, wanting to die or just begin again. I was so happy when the beetles hurled from Grandmother Oak like a confetti cannon. Green and purple, gold and silver, fat as hummingbirds, wings whipping and singing, bringing down the house with all their bellies full of summer, and the thing is, I believed them.

case in point, a clear argument.

(9) We are home and I turn eucalyptus green and I can't breathe. Life was just a simple way of being deceived. The good thief has come, an exchange, my first lover. I try to tell them that I don't want to go to the hospital. This is an escape plan, a dramatic exit from all the prize-fighting and the awful highlights. They take me anyway and I stop breathing. The doctors fashion a hot mask over my face that smells like burning tar and naked purple ponies. They start to counsel my parents about what's going on, they don't think that I'm listening. They tell them that their boy might die, but I stay very quiet. The beetles gather on my bed, a royal robe, a stealth investment. My body shocks like a brandied bible. My body decides to breathe.

(15) We are at the International Marketplace in Waikiki, a night bazaar of trash and other incidental trinkets. I have ten dollars and each dollar is bruising a black hole into the shallow grave of my pockets. I buy a deck of cards. I have never played cards. I will never play cards. Each card is a man with no clothes, proudly displaying everything he has to offer. My first visit to the petting zoo. A viewing room. A chamber of beautiful embarrassment. My parents ask me what I bought at the stand run by that little old lady. Before I can answer, the beetles take flight off into the night and my parents stare at their royal robes in temporary wonder.

(17) I am driving to pick him up. I am about to go on my first real date with a man. We watch an animated film and I think about all the cereal lies of childhood. I park my van on a mountain-top where all the kids go to do these sorts of things. We do those sorts of things. My breath is so short that I wonder if the death-wish has returned out of nowhere, this many years later, and then I realize that this is what people call excitement. As I am finishing in his warm mouth, the beetles cover all the windows of the van, concealing us, protecting us. Months later, I will need protection from him, my black-haired boy, my ivory tower, my secret joy is only a bloody nightmare. The beetles carry me home: they check my feet, measure my breathing, bandage my new and forever wounds.

(29) I am sitting across from the man I no longer love and I am telling him that I am leaving. I am weeping because I do not know how to be without him eating me. Incompleting me. Defeating me. He screams and pleads, insults and kneels. He tries to ream me with his keening. No. I am a balanced equation. I am freedom. I play a quiet movie in my motormaid brain, it's all about the new man that I'm seeing. The man I'm leaving raises his hands above me, and the beetles fill his mouth: a comfort swarm, a newborn reminder, the death of this whole implied disaster. I caught as many as I could within my willing arms, and I kept whispering, faster, faster....

case in point: wherever my husband and I go, I see them. the whole world over, the beetles know and I close my eyes in slumber. They were watching then, they are watching now. Good thing I keep my shimmering wings hidden.

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