On an innocuous car ride back from our weekly grocery trip,
from the throne of my 6-year-old car seat,
I decreed to my mother the hope that I would die before her.
I didn’t want to ever attend her funeral.
She immediately pulled our car-that-could
to the side of the road. I started crying
when she started crying. She said, “no, baby, no, no, no.”
I took it all back, passionate and duplicitous.
I still wanted
in that wordless way I haven’t shaken.
II.
My friend asked me to write this poem.
His girlfriend’s sprite got killed by a stranger with a ladybug skin in some online game,
and we laughed at how avoidable her death had been.
Between us, someone called it “a ladybug named hubris.”
I thought it sounded like a poem title. The challenge was set.
I’m fresh, afraid, self-aware –
I can’t evoke art from title alone, Chuck D antithesis.
I attended one of his talks, a month or so ago;
he went over time for everything
and I wondered if I would ever have so much to say.
III.
Today I found a beetle burrowed in my jacket sleeve
after I took 15 minutes to laze in the sun. I’ve been itching ever since
I first executed a snail underneath my Sketchers, tiny and stupid.
I remember when the only other holy creature besides myself were ladybugs.
Never let slander fly on beauty’s name –
polka dots & eye-snagging red are enough to save a life.
They aren’t afraid to land on your hand or find themselves
on the inside of the driver side window.
But tiny is tiny, I know
the privilege of stillness is one that can ruin you anyways.
--Tirsa E., Adult