On an unknown day, with mysterious weather, at x o’clock, my out-of-focused eyesight vaguely saw a red dot tiptoeing blatantly through the grey carpet.
I zoomed in up front,
leapt away down back.

The ferocious heir of Arthropoda, the Ladybug.

It marched, one pixel by pixel, from the center of the ocean-size carpet towards the great wall, body swaying slightly left and right.
“The pilgrimage must be done on foot.”
One eighth of a fingernail, color of a ripe tomato, the shell hard as diamond, exerting awe.

And it stopped, facing the skyscraper wall.
And few days later, it disappeared

from the surface of the earth.
Maybe was vacuumed up to its tomb,
or crushed by a malicious human being, or caught in a spider net,
or crushed by an unintentional human being, or starved,
or crushed by a fearful human being…


So fragile yet so unreasonably intimidating
With a shell on the back that can split open
with the reveal of an oily segmented soft body and a pair of wings of broken glass
plus six counting legs, the alien’s claw.

Yet with no intention to harm but to stay alive.

A life that should value the same as mine
yet wasted so easily.
Though we do not share the same aspect of life
we all aim to survive.
What is so intimidating about you?

Your tragic death,
probably faced immense fear in a stranger space
froze in desperation in front of a dead end
forgot you could fly
died with only me remembering.


I mourned and mourned as I wrote and reflected,
and jumped at the sight of
a friendly ant,
squeezed out a sentence with my limbic mind:
“if you… don’t come close to me… I will not… harm you…”
Suicide by bugs, quite a scene.

The absurd fear that I can never **** off
and the hypocrite said
I treat every earth life the same.