Insectitude

Benefits of sitting alone

inside your house

all day, for months

include having the brain space to notice things more.

The drones of traffic have been smothered

by a juicy roll of June Gloom fog,

and you can now get across LA at 5 p.m. on a Thursday in 20 minutes.

Organizers are organizing,

dew is forming,

and I am confronted with the novel freedom of time.

I look forward to my mailwoman

buzzing my doorbell,

talking to herself

as she hurries to drop off my coupons and offers

that I will immediately fold into my recycling bin for the trash man to take.

We all have jobs to do!

The sworn enemies in my household are the cockroaches.

They crawl out of the sink,

from behind the stove,

and through the cracks in the cabinet after the lights go out

to scare me in the middle of the night.

They’ve mysteriously disappeared—

gone now that they’ve realized they have to share the space with me.

But in their place, I think,

came the spiders.

I am not someone who is historically afraid of spiders.

I used to whisper my secrets

to the Daddy Long Legs,

with their beady, wise, faces,

in the corners of pink bathroom stalls.

Now I just gingerly take a leg

between my thumb and finger

and float him to the window.

Banana spiders, while menacing,

are tolerated.

If they don’t bother me, I won’t bother them,

since I read that they eat mosquitos.

But what unnerves me are the widows—

known to be timid and afraid of the light—

suddenly appearing on my bathroom mirror,

the windowsill by my pillow,

and tumbling out of my sock.

What on earth are they coming out of their shadows to tell me?

And the hornet—

I know it’s the same one every day,

it has to be—

he sits with me in the backyard sun as I make my way through magazines.

He mostly stays in his little spot

where the cactus meets the dirt,

and the rest of the time he’s giving me a friendly reminder to wear my shoes.

I spray repellents in my hair,

remind him to wear his mask,

ask him if he would mind using headphones for that music.

He still whips by my ears every hour or so,

activating an instinctual fire under my ass,

tormenting and teasing me

just

because

he

can.

I want to squeeze the space between his head and tail,

where a thin black spine is the only thing threading him together,

look him straight in the eyes (and eyes and eyes),

tears streaming down my face,

and ask,

“Are you scared, too?”