Invocation to Fruit Flies
by Thehara S.U.
—after Robyn Schiff
& I’m not sure whether it’s ever “wrong”
to write poetry, whether some experiences
are not meant to be shared because to keep in
some experiences is to be uncomfortable, to know
that some things will never get any reaction
besides your own and thus your own reaction
will never be judged or forgiven. I find myself writing
this anyway to, at the very least, remember
the fifty fruit flies crushed under the pink eraser
of the number two pencil, and I wonder why
a number two pencil, wonder if it feels any different
to be killed by something second-rate. it might have
looked like art from a distance, the fly blood
smudged onto the mass-printed sheets of paper,
the paint brushes we used to flip them on their
diadem-winged backs, the dappled feathers of the
taxidermy falcon behind us as we clicked
the stopwatch and brought down the giant needle
of an eraser to split abdomen and thorax before cleaning
the piece of rubber, pink as a fingernail,
with a twice-folded paper towel, leaving a mess of limbs
and wings folded in on themselves like a shattered inkwell.
I wonder how the dead want their death
to be portrayed, if it is wrong to describe their wings
as a mosaic of cathedral glass – I mean would you want
your killer to compliment you after you’re dead – or if
I should be more truthful and admit that their bodies
were not altars as other bodies may be, but instead
a discomfort to others (myself). I don’t know how I
would want my body to be described, if it is better
to leave it undescribed. sometimes I think I want to be forgotten
but maybe I just want to be remembered in a quiet way.
at least, I believe I want to know I am remembered, in a way
that is not so overt that I doubt the sincerity nor so subtle
that I can’t even recognize it. there is a right and wrong
amount of love you can give. the fruit flies –
I can say I love them, but not too much or I am a hypocrite.
I can say I don’t love them but then maybe that is too cold.
maybe I am dramaticizing it all, but isn’t that everything
in life? sometimes I wonder if I love my father
the wrong amount. because there is some familial debt I think
I am supposed to pay in affection, but I feel criminal paying it
or not. although maybe you think of me as criminal
and a discomfort and second-rate anyway – too woke, too gay
too feminine, too trans (two things that can exist at once).
I suppose I wish you were more black-and-white in that
regard, that you would either love me entirely or not
at all, though I too am dichotomous as everyone else is—
it is so much easier to say what is wrong than what is right.
sometimes easier than saying anything at all – the urge
to self-critique. if I didn’t kill those flies, someone else
would have for me. but if I don’t love you, I don’t know
who will.