We were insects the all of us do you remember that? Waxy glitter crayon colors? Whirring grooming gardens? Hooks and hives and venom. We were insects we hated children.Summer came and we hated them in hundreds: sucking biting screams-at-sundown, legs like lunatics kicking like rowboats dragging like bullwhips like buzzsaws, all over bare feet sticky backs naked necks. Summer came and we ate their ice cream out of the dirt.
We tunneled beggardly blind needy in armpits in earlobes, (they could never feel us then - we were invisible when we wanted), we built altars in the fleshy bends of knees. We sunk thin and righteous like doctors' shots like crusaders' steel and it was there we were healed, it was there we were whole. We were home, then. We stayed and lived quiet as gems until drunken uncles found us with the red ends of cigarettes.
Summer went and our skins did too, the all of us we turned into other things. We were scratchy candy wrappers scraps of comic books we were litter in driveways and windowsills. We were shell casings on the sidewalk. Summer went and the children (we hated them) they crushed us under sneakers on the way to school.
