Before me lies the corpse of a spotted lanternfly,
its stick-legs crossed like Xs above the curvature
of its body. It looks exactly as it does while alive, just
upside down, like it fell asleep and dropped midair,
or allowed a breeze to push it over as it rested.
It’s weird to see one still intact and serene.
I’m so used to seeing smushed and scattered
bits of their wings, faces, stomachs smothered
about the sidewalks and asphalt. These creatures
haven’t heard of death by natural causes.
We’ve been killers since our conception,
conquering the weak and vanquishing threats
for our survival. But as the self-declared
fittest, we can make anything a threat.
We slather walls with the blood
of our enemies and our friends.
As I stare at the fly, another struts out from underneath
my bench toward the corpse. It crawls around its fallen
comrade, as if confirming its status, before facing me.
It makes a clockwise circle two feet wide, eyes locked in
my direction, around the body. I stare at its moving legs
as they stretch out to grab small ridges along the sandpaper-like
ground. What wars this creature’s ancestors must have endured
to make it so cautious.
Two more circles and the lanternfly pauses
as if to ask, “Are you friend or foe?”
I do not respond;
I do not move.
Seemingly satisfied, it loops around the body counterclockwise
before slowly approaching me, stopping just short of my foot.
Does it know I think of crushing its exoskeleton into pieces?
That I am a soldier of a regime, commanded by my superiors
to kill on sight? That by hesitating, fighting this war
within me, I am defying orders ingrained into my DNA?
Its small, beady, impossibly black eyes remain on me,
and I wonder if it means to intimidate me.
I slide away.
Maybe it’s working.
A car horn blares like a signal to advance, and I turn my head
toward it for a moment.
“I have to kill it,” I think.
“I have to.”
But when I turn back, the fly is nowhere in sight.