Big Bug Love

You don’t need to kill yourself for love…
but sometimes it’s hard not to—Larry Brown

I’m sitting in the window sill when poom, my mate hits the screen. He whirs his wings, fumbles around the screen until he finds a way under and comes high stepping his way to me—oh, he is one good-looking bug who won’t be denied.

It’s the same for the girl I share this apartment with, when her man comes knocking. She says where have you been all week? He says I love you and she says ha. It doesn’t matter if she’s hungry and tired, just home from work, he wants to get a buzz on. I can’t live this way, she says. But she lets him drag her into the bedroom.

I can’t deny my mate and I are humming. Our feelers are all over each other. He’s going nung, nung, nung, nung, nung, crazy as always, and there’s always that shock in my joints that makes me buck and grab. Before I know it, I’ve torn his head off and I’m eating it. It’s like a terrible dream. But it’s a lovely one, my heart thrumming, thrumming. Unfortunately, I wake up and see my lover has fallen to pieces. It doesn’t help that this has happened before.

Last week, for her, it was different. There was a fight, she cried and kicked him out, and he hasn’t been back. Since then I’ve sat motionless, every night in the window, thinking, I can’t live like this—but what other way is there?

I try to imagine if she lived like me.

First of all, she’d have a dead body on her hands. Then what would she do? Nothing for a while—just sleep all day, to store up energy. Then she’d wake before evening and wrap him in the sheet. She’d push him off the bed, and pull him sliding along the bedroom floor, across the kitchen linoleum, out the back door. She’d wedge him under the porch railing until he slipped through. It’s a second-floor apartment, so he’d fall a long way and hit the mud with a whack. Then she’d try to forget him. It’s not easy losing a lover. Sometimes it takes courage just to make it from one hour to the next. To be on the safe side she’d stay motionless. What if someone heard the whack and saw a sheet below the window? The blunt form of a thorax underneath, or a leg that’s come out. She has to be ready to fly away.

But probably nothing would happen. The woods are dark and close in back, and the sound would be muffled by street traffic on the other side of the apartments. In a little while she’d go in to clean up. Sponge-mop the kitchen, back to the bedroom where most of the blood is, mop and rinse till the water’s hardly pink. Stuff his clothes in a black garbage bag and throw clean sheets on the bed. Then she could take her shower and wash him out of her hair, singing empty, empty, empty. I do that sometimes. On a hot evening like this she could go out on the front porch where it’s cooler to comb out her wet tangles. The air would be perfumed, like tonight, with the meat of charcoal grills; the first star would have appeared; there would be voices of people having drinks in the parking lot, laughing.

I know this: even though she kicked him out, she never wanted to hurt him.

It’s only that she has to protect herself, and now she needs to forget and move on, to another apartment, maybe in another part of town. It’s getting dark, with just the two of us here, the mercury vapor lamps filling the parking lot with their greenish, silver light; she turns to go in but sees a young man standing under the balustrade and looking up at her. He says hello, it’s hot tonight, isn’t it? He asks if she’d like a cold beer—he’s got an extra in his hand and holds it up and waggles it.

Thanks, I don’t think so, she says, I’ve have a hard day. Naturally she feels exposed—her terry robe is much too small. He’s already coming up the steps but stops below her and offers her the beer. It’s all right, he says, I won’t bother you. And he smiles.

She seems relieved, and relaxes a little. Why is he drawn to her?

I know—it’s her legs, in this light they’re as silvery as mine. She can’t deny he’s beautiful—she’s seen him around. He’s nice, and confident, the way he’s high-stepped up to her. She swings her hair back, says all right I wouldn’t mind, and holds out her hand. What other way there is there to live?