The Fly Carcass in my Water Glass

I see him there, bobbing around with the ice cubes, as cool liquid pours in between my lips. He's so small, it takes a moment to process what it is. A clump of dust. The torn off corner of a magazine page. A fleck of leaf. But there he is: wings, abdomen, little limbs. Floating. Falling apart.

I wonder how long he's been there. I've refilled this water glass several times throughout the past few days, never washing it, just rationalizing, "Only water and my lips." And, apparently, a tiny insect carcass. It would make death so indecent. Invisible walls, invisible liquid. Trapped on all sides as water filled his tiny insect lungs. Then, more water poured over his limp and soaking body and then sipped up from around him, and, later, doused once again.

Maybe, though, he's a recent development. Perhaps his lifeless corpse had fallen from the faucet the last time the glass was filled. Or maybe he dove in and drowned somewhere in the six steps from the kitchen sink to my bedroom. There's a selfish comfort to that thought: perhaps I haven't been drink dead-gnat infused water for the past three days.

But there's no comfort where he's concerned. Even if his death hadn't been ignored and neglected for that long, his body would be disposed of the same way: washed down a drain. No proper acknowledgement of his existence. No fire or burial or chance to let his energy be absorbed by an amphibian foe.

Even this obituary of sorts is an acknowledgment of death and discovery; not of life or accomplishment. And isn't that just the way? Think of the hundreds of thousands and tens of millions of people who once were faces and names and favorite colors and first kisses and weird party tricks and whispers and laughs but now live only as numbers in textbooks or sad statistics in the news paper.

Maybe it's the liberal beat of my bleeding heart but I can't help but mourn for this little monster, submerged and suffocated. Maybe it's the familiarity I feel, remembering the times that I've seen the world where I feel valued and supported turn hostile, indifferent, and duplicitous. Surely, this has happened to us all. Safe, secure, and in the midst of the pleasure that is flight our air becomes water, our wings immersed and unusable, our lungs slowly filling.

I don't say any words as I wash the fly, the water, and the melting ice down the drain in the kitchen. He probably deserved more. This creature.

Created, after all.