2 October 2018

I want to write an honest sentence about love, but I keep confusing it with fascism. The leaders sent each other beautiful letters and then they fell in love. The rest of us live in trauma-land, white walls stenciled with flashbacks, a roller coaster ride that dips around a statue of Stalin, who hears our screams as his joy and not ours. At the soccer game I set my chair on concrete. A bright green praying mantis with one back leg hobbled between me and the woman sitting beside me. She’d been reading a text out loud about her granddaughter who can’t get out of bed or comb her hair. This happened after she won an award. She’s had good treatment. This has been going on for a long time. My neighbor's gentle with the mantis, letting it sit between her two legs. We miss the game’s only goal because she forgets the mantis and jerks it off her leg. She apologizes. It falls on concrete, abdomen heaving, its one bad leg skittering. It hugs a metal chair support. Her grandson is a missionary in Africa. The game ends. The mantis is dying. Her friend finds a leaf of appropriate size and they cajole mantis onto leaf. Friend carries mantis to the grass beneath the tree. It’ll be more comfortable on the ground in the shade. Walking to the car I see the man beside the bicycle who’d been talking loudly about dog sleds. The blizzard is coming, he’d said at Waipio Soccer Park on a hot day when the trades had stopped. There’s a golf cart beside him now. My dog sleeps under her blanket on days like this. When I put my cereal bowl down, she comes out to drink.

--2 October 2018