Cicada on the sidewalk,
I’m not mad at you. I’ve had seventeen years to make this deduction; in that time I’ve moved so far from the Virginia house that I scarcely remember the color of the carpet anymore. Just the pattern remains; decidedly a tread-worn Persian, with some ornate border like crown molding. You may not remember what you could possibly have done to anger me. After all, I was so young—but I guess relative to you even a toddler would look monstrous. No offense. This is what I want to say before the other things: I don’t have the privilege of hibernation, of selecting a window of time in which to be out, to be vulnerable, to let the world pick at me. Only to retreat to my hole when the going gets tough. I have to be here, inside me, outside, all the time. Do you know what that’s like?
Tonight the rain is freezing—not frozen and not exactly liquid—it’s in a transitory state, outside our classifications. It’s freezing on the windows of my dorm room, freezing into the cracks in the sill, stealing in. If you were here, you wouldn’t be; you’d be deep underground, crust around your mandibles, drool on your plated chin. I walk below a small tree planted under a lamppost. The yellow light is fractal, divided but restored, made more whole by the branches that split it. I watch, silent, from underneath. Then I keep walking.
I know what you’ll say, and yes, I have found room in my life for romance. Actually, you’ve missed a lot. The best was a pomegranate bush, fully fruiting, on a mountainside in Palos Verdes. From that slope I could see the ocean and the desert all at once. Islands dotted the sea like portals to a less salty dimension. Joshua trees reached for God. I stared with purpose into the glare, and you’ll be happy to hear I thought of you. You were probably sleeping.
What I’m getting at was that time, seventeen years ago, when I picked you up off the sidewalk outside the house in Virginia. I think about it now with fear for my past self. What treacherous pathways did you reveal by presenting me, an unknowing child, with a vital choice? How dangerous could it really be, the act of radical trust?
I’m re-telling our story to re-remember, and sending it to you to remind you that your actions don’t end when you do them. That at any given moment, you’re doing everything you’ve ever done all over again, to every person to which you’ve ever done anything, all at once. Maybe I’m making sense; maybe I’m not. You’ve had years and years, though, to figure me out.
But we were our own little secret. Do you remember the deal we made? Respect to my mother’s sensitive ears; no chirping inside or after 9 p.m. In exchange I agreed to let you out of the cardboard box. You flew in perfect triangles around my room until you collapsed. Then we would talk and talk. You know this.
That night I said hey, cicada. You said what. I said, why does it feel like you chose me? You said I don’t know.
The conversation went on.
You could see something budding in me—it was a simple sadness, but a big one, and unusual for a three-year-old. I’d known it was coming, in fact it had already begun spilling out of me, sadness like a blue mold; pathogenic, beautiful. Dark blue, pen-ink sadness on my lumpy fingers, smudging white kitchen tiles, leaving sickly shadows in the bathtub. It brought me friends on the playground, but the wrong ones. Troubled children who scratched at their bodies as if trying to shed. Above all it was unsettling; what had I, at such a young age, already found in this world to be sad about? Hell if I knew, but I had been good to you. You wanted to help. You had a solution for me, your poor, sad, fallible human best friend.
The hole in the Persian carpet had been there for ages, but that night you made it change colors; it shone purple and silver, swirling metallic and glowing up at me. I remember you let out a chirp, not like your tree-borne screams, this one deeper, more percussive. It was loud; it was past 9 p.m. The hole opened wider, the circumference of my waist now, and swirling, beckoning me. I knew you wanted me to go with you, I knew the hole led somewhere underground, to your dreamy haven of utter absence. I knew not just every person got this opportunity. Fear kicked, high in my chest. I could leave this world, my unfounded, aching sadness, for your hollow nook, devoid of feeling. Seventeen years.
I looked at you and I couldn’t figure out what color your eyes were. I hopped over the hole, left you in my room. I’m sorry, but what could I have done? I remembered there were things I in fact liked to feel; a wet sandbox, an unusually smooth portion of my bottom lip. This part you don’t know: I tiptoed down the hallway, crawled into my mother’s bed.
The next morning I met the husk of you; you had scribbled an address on a Post-It next to your burnt-up skeleton, in case I changed my mind. Today is seventeen years since then. Somewhere south of here, you’re out in all your glory, screaming at the gods. I’m happy for you. Today I woke up and went on a hike. I picked a pomegranate from the bush and scooped out the seeds and nibbled on them. I finished a novel. Went on a date, even. Went to work, of course. My sisters and I watched a TV show until late at night, then I went to bed and fell asleep. I remember, in the morning after you left, I slid off my mother’s bed into a square of sunlight. I tugged her hand and insisted, “I’m awake, I’m awake!”
So—no; I’m not angry, you showed me earnestness before any one human ever did. I hope you can find in my declination of your offer a well wish. I want all my life split into several reams of seventeen years; I want to eat and sleep and wake and wait to hear you scream.
Your friend.