An Avengement

it was a short scream and extreme frenzy

funneled into extreme quiet

the abused boot weapon lay now, next to the dead body

a cockroach, victim to fear

it's another moment of silence

and another

but the thing about bugs, is that you never quite hear them -

avenge the stolen soul

dragging their thick thoraxes across the underbellies of beds

and sideways plateaus of table legs

more little bodies than the eye can see

move in honey-slow procession towards the perpetrator

antennas twitching, war messages are delivered silently

across the field

some are squirming, some are crawling,

all inch-worming towards a single destination

there's a cry that wants to erupt, but the human's mouth is quickly felled by

bugs

and bugs

and bugs

it's a switch

buzzing, twitching, mandible-crunching

and the creators of pesticide, the pest itself,

lays as a festival of a corpse for days after

Jessalin Lee