I saw a cicada today. Dead on the pavement, it’s legs up, and wings curled like burnt paper.
I almost stepped on it but didn’t. Instead, I stopped and stood there for a minute and showed it to my uncle who was walking beside 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 one hell of a lifecycle.
And this one didn’t even make it off the concrete.
Part of me wanted to laugh at the absurdity of it. Part of me felt sick, like I’d walked in on something holy right after it ended.
I’m not sure how long it had been there. Could’ve been hours. Could’ve been days. But it hadn’t be long enough for the world to forget it tried.
I stood over it for too long, like someone might think I knew it personally, like I might be grieving a bug.
And maybe I was.
I think about how much time I’ve spent underground. Not actual 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 scream.
But cicadas still do it.
They emerge, and scream anyways.
Not for legacy or 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 towards it.
Either way, I still didn’t step on the cicada.
I left it there. Wings curled up, it’s body still.
A small monument to something that tried.
