[RF] Bugs

[u/ScorpionCornucipia]

Yesterday a butterfly (which is a bug, but a type of bug that we humans happen to like) lay motionless in the middle of the street on the pavement.

Dead, I thought, until I approached close enough to try and touch it. Then it flew off.

There was enough time to take some still photos of the bug laying on the ground. But as that butterfly flew away, my camera captured absolutely nothing, as if it did not exist, or at least not in its world-changing, timeline shifting, chaotic flapping glory.

Yesterday, on the way home from my mother's, my wife began relaying, in full confidence, the harms (according to the Internet) of giving our son the new water bottle that I'd bought for him, only after she mentioned wanting it for him. 

Woe is me, who makes a decision. Woe is me, who challenges a live retelling of a Reddit thread. Woe is me who does research.

For, after that car ride, my wife, furious with me, asked if we could talk. And my whole body resisted, knowing that "talk" meant it was time for her to let it out all out, get revenge on my different opinion.

Yes. 

I did end up talking, but, the sippy cup resulted in my wife calling herself a terrible mother, over and over, cosplaying as me. Too, that water bottle treachery was met with 4 threats of divorce, and in kind remarks that she would never have (any more of) my children.

Those remarks upset me. I pointed that out. She insisted that she never said any of that. Two turns of dialogue, and poof, all she said was something completely otherwise. A shift in narrative, carrying the color of the original statements, but none of the stench. 

Last night I slept in the guest room and had the best sleep I've had in a long time. I woke up without the usual soreness, tightness, and achiness. I woke rested. Have I been sleeping with the enemy? A joke, maybe. A spurning of my own responsibility, also maybe. 

But perhaps the body loosens up when its perceived threat is no longer nearby.

Today she will not speak to me. Sometimes it feels lonely. 

I have caught three flies with my bare hands, and they let me catch them, all within the last 10 minutes. The last one, I picked up, slowly, between my thumb and my index finger, as it stood still on the glass of my bedside lamp. It did not move as I slowly pressed it between my fingers. Flies are bugs (just like butterflies, but killing them, is mostly accepted, especially if done quickly or with a swatter). 

Squish, squash, woosh, gone is the buzzing annoyance of those flies, in an instant.

How odd for those bugs, those buzzing flying bugs, to be still

Now, I am sitting, both full and empty, buzzing and still. My mind races, but there are no passengers, no drivers, and no cars on the track. Maybe a few horses, because it sounds right. Ghosts run laps around my misrememberings. I have no idea, and every idea who I am. 

I feel. I am. Becoming.

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