Ghosts of the Navigator

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I saw a cicada today.
Dead on the pavement. Legs up. Wings curled like burnt paper.

I almost stepped on it.
Didn’t.
Stopped and just stood there for a minute, and showed it off to my Uncle who was walking with me.

They say some cicadas spend seventeen years underground.
Seventeen years. Waiting.
Just to crawl out of the dirt, shed a skin, scream at the sky, maybe fall in love, and die.

That’s a hell of a lifecycle.
And this one didn’t even make it off the concrete.

Part of me wanted to laugh; the absurdity of it.
Part of me felt sick.
Like I’d walked in on something holy right after it ended.

I don’t know how long it had been there.
Could’ve been hours. Could’ve been days.
But it hadn’t been long enough for the world to forget it tried.

I stood over it for too long, like someone might think I knew it.
Like I might be grieving a bug.
And maybe I was.

I think about how much time I’ve spent underground.
Not literal dirt. But buried all the same.
In my own head, mostly.

Seventeen years is a long time to be quiet.
Even longer when no one notices when you start to sing.

They still do it.
Cicadas.
They emerge.
They scream anyway.

And not for legacy. Not for applause.
Just because that’s what they’re here to do.

Sometimes I wonder if I’ve already had my one week in the sun.
Other times, I think maybe I’m still climbing toward it.

Either way, I didn’t step on the cicada.

I left it there.
Wings curled. Body still.
A little monument.