Dance Intensive with Cicadas After Seventeen Years
Children bind cicadas to cement with tape, and we stand nearby. Bulbous bodies. Beneath scotch tape, males flex tymbals in their abdomens. Drum-organs pulsate and hum like warnings. Once, you gripped my hips during the rehearsal. I mistake performance for dance. Give meaning to strangers. We blur in motion under your bed where it is dark, watch for shadows passing over the tungsten orange slant of light on the floor. My earring comes unfastened. Bloodied opal. Cicadas throb so loudly we don’t hear its drop. Your lips, your weight, your own slant and angle hurt me. Then, your hurried words and exit.
I know about all the other girls who danced en pointe for you. When I leave, the sky looks like water viewed through a wing. Veins and membrane fragment. Gulls drift, then pluck the cicadas from the ground. I step over entrails. I leave a nymphal exoskeleton beneath your bed.
Kathryn Haemmerle has been published in 2River View and LUMINA Online Journal. She grew up in the Chicagoland area and the Florida Panhandle. A 2014 graduate with a BA in literature and creative writing from Saint Mary’s College in South Bend Indiana, Kathryn currently lives and works in Boston.