Triumph of the Gnat

Transcription:

Midnight comes, I watch it pass —

Rural night, a unique breed of darkness.

Nary a whisper nor a lamppost,

So I remove my ears and eyes;

Retreat into the void.

A gnat has made itself my bedmate.

He offers gentle kisses as he

Skitters down my arm;

Tiny feet and wings that flit.

I strike,

But draw no blood.

Like a feather on my cheekbone;

I swipe, and suddenly

He has found my torso,

Now my ankle, next my neck...

The heatwave and the panic

Smell like rotted flesh.

And I could be

Lying in the killing fields, or

Neck deep in the swamp —

Mistaken for a nightmare when I'm

Just another night on Planet Earth.

I want to crawl out of my body...

Let him have it.

He has won.

He has won.

Little bug,

Is that what you want?

Triumph?

I can't see you,

But I feel you;

Everywhere.

I am Kafka ripped from context,

Eyes and ears and arms and blood;

A writer in suspended animation

Caught up in the suffocated dark

That feels like everything

Before anything existed.

I am a bug —

A pest —

I am everywhere.

J.K.