Crickets

We all have crickets. Even you have them deep inside you. They bother the better half of us at night or when we're having a bad day. With the sole purpose to stay by your side while making your life harder, these crickets live with you until you set them free. Although, naturally crickets tend to stay close to where they were born. So they'll sit outside your house on those cold nights and sing their dark song from outside your window until they can get your complete attention—but most of us fall asleep before we find an urge to go find the cricket. Those of us to get the crickets on the outside are so lucky, for they don't carry the burdens in their home.

Those people are so damn lucky.

In relationships these crickets could easily become a problem.

You both walk into your new home with your crickets, and want to put them in a nice glass jar on the shelf. They sing their songs so loud some nights but you guys are so proud to have them in their jars and controlled, because you guys have each other no matter how loud their painful shrieks are. But you want to get rid of those crickets, because you see the toll it takes on your partner. The way it ages them slowly and hurts them every now and so often. You can see the effects of the dark songs those crickets have been singing to him. So you always try and reach for that jar on the shelf when they're not looking.

You only want to set them free—let them leave him alone forever. You sneak away most but some are just so hard to get out. So you push... hard... and harder. Meanwhile, the whole time you tried to do the same for your crickets, he would tell you “they're gonna be okay” and place them right back on the shelf. He loves to dust them off to show you what you've overcome, but they don't hear that sick song those crickets play at night.

So here you guys are, with your many crickets and his few. The system has been going easy and so you don't worry about it anymore.

An earthquake hits. Those clean glass jars fell with anger, as though gravity affected them more than everything else in the home—as though those crickets wanted out. Now they're everywhere. He tries to pick them up while you try to shove them out of the house but they're jumping around so fast, back and forth and back; you step on glass and there's blood everywhere now; you stop to look beside you, but he is gone.

It's scary now because the crickets are everywhere and now you don't have him to keep you sane while they sing their twisted songs. But out of the corner of your eye you catch him walking out of the house, with his few crickets in hand. Everything hurts. Everything is lost.

When the earthquake finally shakes its last quakes, you find yourself looking out the window, looking with a long pitiful face. Where has he gone? Will he ever come home?

One day soon after, you see him... standing right outside the window. You have a brief conversation and come to find that he left because he thought when you were trying to throw out the crickets, you were going to throw him out too. You then try to explain yourself but the crickets in your house scream of terror and all things bad. But this time you let them take you over, because now you don't have that safe blanket of having someone to hold when it's too scary. You lay there and become puppet to those spiteful songs. He bangs both hands on the window because now he sees what these crickets really do to you and now he wants to throw them out for good.

But the door is right around the corner of the house and it's been unlocked since he left.