I placed my bread to heat for just five seconds--
behold: when I came for it, it wasn't alone.
A mayfly had set up camp (so to speak)
with my wheat bread, my most favored
Amish-baked, sliced-before-my-own eyes bread;
and when I say it "set up camp," I do not
mean anything pleasant. I do mean six thin legs
sprawled long and broken when discovered
and perhaps some melted insides; who's to say?
Something turned inside of me and I'm certain
I grimaced at least a little, and took my plate back,
thinking, disturbed just slightly. How had I not
seen the fly? It couldn't have touched the bread--poor thing--
just rested there, unknowing, to be slaughtered.
*"Mom...Mom...Ahh, uhh, Mom! Mom?"
(mother assesses circumstances, unceremoniously takes a napkin
to my victim, and introduces his corpse to the garbage)
"He probably wasn't in there when I...right?"
--"It probably was."
"But five seconds couldn't have killed him."
I know I am wrong
as I feel the warm grains of my prize.
(mother gives a long look and says...)
--"If it heated the bread, I'm sure it heated the bug."*
I took my bounty anyway--the bread, that is, mind you--
and went to eat it absentmindedly, but found that
now impossible. Sigh. I also found myself
staring, long and hard, then, at half of a piece
of glorious, Heaven-breathed wheat bread,
and suddenly realized that I could not discern
whether or not I was enjoying it. ******
And then I tried to reassure myself by chiding
inwardly, "You're just afraid of insects
irrationally," but maybe I actually
felt that the blood of an
innocent life was on
my hands.
*Why are they so stupid? I ask
no one really, fighting revulsion,
grasping for blame.*
Alas, I finished eating but felt rightly robbed
of some essential part of the experience.
Yet, such is life.