at a young age, my father taught me to love
insects.
instead of killing, my father would capture spiders,
centipedes, beetles in empty pickle jars.
he would show me the anatomy, let me admire
the different colors, the shape of the pinchers,
how each one moved.
we had a praying mantis hung up on the wall,
it scared my girlfriends.
we had a hairy tarantula encased in a glass orb,
guests could never stare at it for too long.

i compare these insects to my father.
elegiac, with pinchers hidden but
present.
like the insects, i could never understand my father.
when he disappeared for days, reappearing with nothing
but a frown and the scent of beer,
i imagined him with the wings of a beetle, and he had
to fly off to a faraway kingdom.

i compare these insects to my father,
beautiful, but threatening.
his scorpion’s tail was his hand with a bottle,
his poison was the amber liquid squishing
his blood.

i compare these insects to my father,
fragile, unwieldy.
as a butterfly glides through spring, it is similar
to my father discussing his favorite things,
or deep in thought in a novel, or how his eyes
glint when he sees me after a long
absence.
but my father is far more exquisite than
any butterfly.

i still am intrigued by insects, yet i do not
admire them in empty jars.
i set them free, imagining if my father ever longed
to escape his own
jar.