Ladybird Long Stay Hotel
late in the season again — the way I’m late for everything that matters — and there they hang, those dead hydrangea heads, brown and crisp as paper lanterns left out in the rain, still clinging to stems that don’t give a damn, pushing out new blossoms anyway, pink and smug, like the world saying fuck you to everything that’s finished.
slow decay and rebirth,
the same old dance, the same tired band
playing the same tired tune.
I slog through the wet grass, boots sucking mud, clippers dangling from my fist like some half-arsed sword I never learned to swing, heading for that hedge that’s been mocking me for months. the shed’s a mess, tools thrown around like drunks after last call, and there they are — the yellow suede gloves, fancy West Country stuff I bought when I still thought I deserved nice things.
inside the thumb of one glove, a whole goddamn hotel of ladybirds — seven-spots, ten-spots, two-spots, packed in tight like winos in a flophouse, hibernating, dreaming whatever the hell insects dream. when spring comes, they’ll wake to aphid soup, bark-bread, then the main course: each other, or whatever crawling thing stumbles into the dining room. dessert’s ripe fruit, pollen, nectar, the sweet stuff.
I stand there like a fool, glove in my hand, feeling sadder than I’ve any right to feel about a bunch of bugs. the hedge can wait. one glove’s enough for a man with nothing better to do than envy an insect its rest. let the little bastards sleep — they’ve earned it more than I ever did.
seven-spots, ten-spots,
dreaming in the yellow thumb—
I put the glove down.
