My daughter hates them,
the crickets that have colonized
my kitchen since summer,
the crescendo of their chorus
at night. She begs me to kill them.
I tell her to be brave.
But while she sleeps, I tiptoe
through the dark kitchen,
a flashlight in one hand,
a slipper in the other,
and one by one, I slay them.
When I was her age, 15,
I spent a summer in Colorado.
I remember putting on a sock,
feeling the tickle of a cricket in the toe.
Thirty years later and I still shake
out my socks. I’ve never told her.
Last night, I massacred six, swept
their broken bodies and severed legs,
antennae still twitching,
into the plastic dustpan.
And then I saw one swimming
in the dog’s water bowl and thought
of Steve Kowit’s “Prayer,” the tip
of his finger lifting midges and gnats
from his dog’s water bowl, and suddenly,
I wanted to save this one,
wanted to hear it sing.
[See also
A
Prayer, in The Sun (Issue 423, March 2011).]
is a writer, artist, educator, and mother of two. She holds a BA in Studio Art from
UC Santa Cruz, and is currently pursuing an MFA at Pacific University in Oregon.
Anna also works as the Director of a small non-profit preschool in Mission Hills.
Her writing has appeared in The Cancer Poetry Project 2; A Year in Ink, Volume 6
(San Diego Writers, Ink Anthology); and Serving House Journal.