If small insects like the jeweled ladybug sent out a cry for help, would you hear it? You remember a nursery rhyme from childhood about a king who stuck a fork into his dessert, releasing four and twenty blackbirds baked in a pie. But if they were truly baked and done for, they wouldn't be able to fly out of their tomb of shortcut pastry, would they? And since they began to sing in chorus, they must have had nine lives or there was some wizardry involved— the type that sets off snare drums, broomsticks falling briskly in line to empty trash bins and carry buckets of water. What padlocked the doors to bewilderment and surprise in your blood and held up a stop sign every time you saw a swan and recalled tales of transfiguration? The snake doesn't whisper Sit in the corner like a good child. In that kind of story, it urges you to take a big bite out of the shiny apple, bets you could steal cheese from a mousetrap or filch a smoke without being caught. People have lost big in TV shows where the host asks you to choose between wads of money or a taped-up mystery box containing... what exactly? Perhaps you are the insect— just a small creature, and not large as allegory like the one in a Kafka story. You do your everyday things: fry and eat an egg for breakfast, swim a couple of laps at the gym, dutifully take out the recycling. You squint up at the fading light one evening, and remember how in your teens you really wanted to learn the bass guitar, rack up enough points to join the local Mensa club, or train as a long-distance runner if not for being flat- footed. No, none of those, to your dismay. But the voice of some wise sage says in your ear that it's alright. Neither you nor the barnyard creatures nor the bright blue Morpho butterflies nor the earthworms churning up the soil older than all of us necessarily need saving all the time. Your daughter texts you to say that one day, when she took her second-grader to the park, she was feeling so burned out from work. She joined him on the slides a couple of times, and felt a little better. You tell her— next time they visit, you'll drop everything you're doing so you can go to the teahouse you enjoyed so much the last time, to drink oolong, eat finger sandwiches, popcorn chicken, and scones.
