I keep a bug

on my shoulder, unsure what kind since I can’t turn my head enough to check. My bug’s eyelashes, Eskimo kisses, sweet nothings, wings brush my skin. I keep a bug on my shoulder—just one total, not one for each shoulder—as some sort of unary devil-angel manifestation, like that kind of know-it-all inner voice that tells you not to eat junk food and argues with the other brash voice that only knows the phrase, treat yourself. I keep a bug on my shoulder the way many people keep pets, for company that, being technically a hostage, cannot judge me for my absentminded, my derailing, my superego—for watching so much Food Network. I keep my neck engaged so I don’t crush my bug—sometimes I feel feet flick fast side to side, a conga line, all the legs bristled to latch on, just me, not a party, my bug assures me—so I know there are more legs than I thought I saw my bug’s reflection in the TV once right after I shut off Guy’s Grocery Games, speckles of brown and orange like freckles, the stains on my shirt after eating sweet potato in cinnamon sugar…no, sorry, not me, today I thought I would give your right shoulder a try. Yesterday, snuggled against the gusts my bug rubbed its antennae on me—my bug knows I’m ticklish, I flinched, performed that dirt off your shoulder move, mid two thousand’s hip hop, and felt no bug but conga line stitches connecting winged hem of my shirt to the rest—so I shrugged into the couch, sidestepped an olive mushed into the rug, stretched down and plopped it onto my tongue, bristled with specks and split ends, and let my shoulders hang in a state of bra-less-ness, bloomed after a long spring.