Something that looked like a mutant mosquito
was climbing on our ceiling last night
with long, spindly legs and large wings strapped to its back.
You would think it had drunk some super-soldier serum
from a comic book and now had a ridiculous size and strength
for a reedy-looking insect.
“But it’s not going to suck our blood right?” I asked,
eyeing it with trepidation.
“Oh no, no,” my husband assured me,
“it’s not even a mosquito.”
It was a crane fly (he looked it up).
Harmless to humans, its only purpose in this life
is to be,
to reproduce and to be eaten by something else.
I briefly wondered how it had gotten into our living room,
concluded that it must have moved in as I was calling
out to our dog in the front yard,
scolding him for excavating the flower bed.
The crane fly is gone now,
perhaps a feast for the spider that resides in the corners of our ceiling,
perhaps weary of this life, it fell to the ground,
and was swept up with the dust and lint and dog hair
of my furious cleaning,
or perhaps it made its escape
and is quietly, invisibly saving the world
from an insect super-villain.
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