Fly

[Caleb Murdock]

Fly


Poor fly – very small, a fruit fly –
floated 'round my bathroom five days if not a week.
So small that I could not hear you buzz.
I swatted at you every instant that I spied you,
but you nimbly made your escapes.

You fed on the scum on the sink bowl.
I washed the sink to stop you, to starve you.
Such a little fly, but well worth the obsession.

Then came that morning when you did not move,
that morning when I got you, then flicked you down the drain
with a tidal wave of water to make sure the threat was gone;
but suddenly I did not feel safe at all.

The winter had arrived, and you were trapped inside.
Perhaps you flew in before the cold came, or came to life
in my garbage bin, rising like a phoenix from the rotting meat.

Had I pulled the window up, the cold might have killed you,
stopped you from being my only companion for a week,
but I did not want to pee in the cold.

Perhaps when I got you, you were already dead,
dead from natural causes, sitting at the wing of God
in fly heaven.  I hope so.

Dead from starvation?  I hope not.
I feel ashamed.

Poor fly.  Doomed by everything.  By me.
By time.  By choices.  By life which always dies.
By God too.  Oh, I am also a fly!