Night Sightings

The streetlights are solemn sentinels

Fixing their jaundiced eyes on miscreants.

The lighthouse brandishes its bright sabres

In response to the wailing of distant ships.

You appear to be just another wanderer

Meandering home; ultramarine suit snagged

Tightly around your shoulders (false impression

Of a stolid build). Golden Rolex glittering at alternate

Angles—a landbound star. Yes, you appear to be

Any other man, and this studied normality

More than anything is what relates you

To me. Still you approach

With the cautiousness of a cougar hunting an elk.

Still your eyes are glazed with that wet shimmer of guilt—

And reproach. But don’t just blame me, dear.

What does it say about the both of us

That we only ever find ourselves in shadow?

 

The brief lives of adult mayflies have been noted

By many entomologists. Adult females of the genus

Dolania americana survive for only five minutes

Before perishing. The adult mayfly boasts a number

Of vestigial feeding appendages about their mouths,

But they cannot truly eat, for their bodies are built towards

The fanatical fulfillment of a singular purpose: sex.

It does not matter that the individual is transient

If the whole is perpetuated; they live only to reproduce.

The mayfly’s digestive systems are clogged

Entirely with air, and their frenetic mating must

Come from a need to sate that maddening emptiness.

 

A lacquered park bench—crude rustling of fabric—

Groping hands crawling over parts—glutton-minded

Long daddies—anti-homeless handles digging

Into my ribs—you gnaw at my ears—rabid mutt.

I think vaguely, pointlessly how I always eschewed pork ears

At the dinner table because I never liked the soft

Yet supple crunch of the cartilage—the thought disrupted;

You thrust with the renewed urgency of a hog in heat.

It is funny to me how we have forgotten the end

In our pursuit of the means; how desperate

We are to absorb another into ourselves

Even knowing it will bear no fruit;

Even knowing it will provide only a brief flicker of ecstasy

Before fading into the mumbling darkness again.

 

It is a common misconception that the mayfly’s lifespan is short.

In truth, a mayfly can live up to several years as a nymph,

Biding time for its season to come.

The mayfly lives a fuller life than most insects, and we forget

Its earlier years in observation of its explosive adulthood.

It seems as if I, too, have spent my life in a perpetual

Manner of waiting. For as long as I can remember

I have set my eyes on some vague dream of a white

Picket fence, a loving wife, a child—maybe two.

Tell me. How can you bear the life you choose

When you know it is one that others chose for you?

I have long since lost sight of what I have been waiting for.

The dream is—has been—dead. I feel no shame

Nor regret. Only a deep disappointment

That I have contented myself with subsisting on

Such meagre gruel.

 

Thirty dollars, dirty jeans, and another visit to the doctors.

Back bent, you scurry off just as the others do.

I have often wished to be void of desire. My hamstrings

Fail me when I attempt to stand, so I let my body fall

To the wet grass. The wind tickles my bare skin—

A stomach ache is coming. Simultaneously

Feverish and frostbitten, I want nothing more than to be

Enveloped in a womb of blankets—to never wake up—

To spend the rest of my life in an eternal Sunday morning—

But I am also desperately stifled. There is something under

My skin that I simply cannot reach. I want to tear at my body

Until I finally expose and cauterize the dry-rot plaguing my soul.

Somewhere off in the murky safety of the lake, nymphs

Bury their heads in mud and wait for their time to come.

 

In his studies of the Ephemeroptera,

Herman T. Spieth observed two mayflies copulating

Even as they fell in tandem to the ground.

For an hour afterwards they attempted to separate,

But their twitching appendages were iron-hooked.

They lived the way they died:

Fused together, in a grotesque congress.

Hanwen Zhang is a freshman Neuroscience major at the University of Southern California. He is currently a writer for Haute, USC’s art, culture, and lifestyle publication.