Poetry by Samantha Chan
Art by Brian Lee
As kids we all used to kneel around snails and ants and
worms. We rummaged in school bags for bottle caps,
mini smarties boxes, pencil cases–– any little container
to collect little creatures, because while the concrete
prickled our already scabby knees, a thing being alive
was the most spectacular novelty in the world.
I once trapped a pill bug in a coffin-tube of used-up lip balm
and brought it home, wedged between cap and wax.
Then on my desk my favourite bug lugged itself forwards,
tiny legs congealed together in a greasy push and drag,
and saw for myself the truth of what it means to have a box
picked especially for you. The grease could not be undone.
Still, I kept rice-bugs in a jar, an ant farm in plain soil.
I used to pick up daddy long-legs and ladybugs between
my baby-fingers with ease. Until I grew, scared and older,
acutely aware of the uncanniness of having too many legs;
too many cruelties. Aware, that life is as frantic as the flailing appendages
of a centipede flipped helplessly onto its back.
And so I find myself frantically crawling along
the unspeakable grief of growing up.
A murderer in hindsight, I have yet to say what I am,
yet I hoped that I’ll someday choose kindness before I die.
I took to bringing moths to trees, bees off the sidewalk;
scooped up with a yellow leaf or a yellow post-it note of errands,
until autumn passed; and I find that my trembling hands
were more often fists. Gentleness is lost on me
when life’s a fight to live. I can no longer afford
to parade a pounding heart on an open palm. Unable
to hold a warm hand, or pat a soft blanket
over my stomach to fall asleep–– for hearts dry up
when left exposed to the open air, and I have no time
to wait for old warmths that will never come back.
There are no words for the history of bugs I’ve naively
put under. They scamper away from me now.
Into the dirt. Buried. I might want to forget them.
So I left insects alone entirely, let them all
crawl back to hell where they belong,
swept away as storage boxes stuffed under my bed––
because novelty must die its swift, sunless death
after two busy decades of bugs.