New Leaf Literature

Things by

I wake up with a bigger, heavier body.

They hang in their glass jar on a leather strap by the door, erratically luminescent.

In the stillness, I feel my past fattening on the tender youth of my future. I look at them and sigh.

I take up a water can and carry the shimmering jar, with tiny holes pricked in a metal lid, through the silver night and into the field.

Brittle wing covers, glossed black in moonlight, keep gossamer wings.

They crawl mechanically, persistently, aimlessly on the smooth glass, showing me their intricate bellies.

Two delicate triangular panes; a yellow green paper lantern. Their frail abdomens blink on.

Then off.

They crawl up the sides of the jar, then fall back again and kick their little legs in the air defiantly.

These are my dreams.

I twist off the metal lid, collect one between my thumb and forefinger.

It waves its legs up at me wildly, rolls its head, twists its antenna, furls its segmented abdomen in protest, blinks alarm.

The soil is loose and rich, pungent and earthy in soft blacks and browns. It yields like a sponge beneath my crouching body.

I sow them like seeds; press them down in the dirt with my rigid thumb, one by one.

I crush their little bodies.

Their glow stains the soil. It sparkles strangely in the moonlight, like so many flecks of silver in a grainy yellow oil.

I scrape a bit of soil over the impression in the dirt, and pour some water on it from the watering can.

The wet soil sops down sadly in the night, looking like some sort of soggy swamp animal exhaling its last.

Next year this will be a penny bush; I will harvest certainty, one copper coin at a time.