Mayfly

I’ve been super busy with a work related crisis lately, but I’m going to put a story here that I wrote a while back so I don’t forget to be active with it. And for my 2 followers. 🙂

Mayfly

“They got the wrong house again,”  you say, looking out into the front yard, over the marigolds that your wife planted long ago, to the grass that used to be green.

“I guess.” says your daughter,  without looking up.  She sits, crosslegged and barefoot, pinning insects to a piece of cardboard by porchlight.  She is surrounded by a beetle, a butterfly, a grasshopper, a cockroach, several other drab insects, and a metallic-green June bug.

She looks like her mother in this light. Here, the light reflects off her smooth hair, which is twisted into a clip at the back of her head. The ends stick out on the top like a brush. Her skin is soft in the yellow of the lamp.

You wonder if she remembers her mother, if she misses her like you do. Someday, you will ask her.

You walk to the edge of the porch steps and look out again, your back to her and her bugs.  The moon is blurry behind the mist, but you can still make out the word  burnt into the front lawn.  Last time when it was red paint, it was easily fixed with a lawnmower. This time would be trickier.

“Lets go inside,” you say.

“In a minute.”

She sticks a pin through a butterfly. Her hands are covered with orange dust from its wings. She scrubs them on her overalls and grabs another pin.

You stand between  Amy and the paint on your lawn. Someone made a mistake. There is no slut here.  You work long hours, then watch reruns of  MASH.  Nothing else happens to you. Amy is only fifteen.  She still makes valentines out of construction paper. She still sleeps with that stuffed rabbit with one missing eye.

This morning,  you asked her if she knew who might have done it. She said she did not.

It is a mistake. You will leave them a note telling them so in case they come back.  Maybe paint the note on the lawn. Maybe keep Amy inside, until the misunderstanding is cleared up, just in case.

“It’s time to go inside,” you say again, like you mean it.  She is cradling a brown insect, winged and dead, in her palm.

“Look,” she says, “A Mayfly. After they get wings, they live only one day.”  It is her little-girl voice coming from her mother’s face. You smile.

“Is that so?” you say.  It doesn’t look like much. Like a dragonfly’s tiny, brown cousin.

“Just a day,” she says again. She places it on the cardboard and stabs it carefully through the thorax.