Consolation For Those Mid-Crisp

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CONSOLATION FOR THOSE MID-CRISP


On the off-chance that you’re a lady-

bug wedged in wicker, you may 

one day find that what makes you you


and not another Latinate beetle

has been spray-painted a vernal shade 

of green. This means that even were you


to miraculously extricate yourself 

you’d no longer be yourself 

but the sage green ladybug, 


set-apart as prophet or pariah

in your egg-shell sheen. The good news

is that your death won't occur


tangled in a swarm of interchangeables,

which is why you left in the first place,

suspicious of the mindless milling


and hoping to be somebody more 

than what you were. And more 

good news: it worked, if not quite the way


you envisioned it. You’ve met the painter. 

You can never go back to your old,

spotted ways. You’ll die here, 


of course, a nobody with no one 

to tell about it, but at least

you’ll go tangled in something bigger 


than the screened-in swarm of yourself.



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