On the internet hangs the fat hum of periodical cicadas,
thick heavy like the air inside a brothel, all
pent up energy and stupid lust released before
they mate and die. A guillotine is poised, though above whom
is unknown maybe meaningless. As long as it drops,
we should be fine. Revolution is well, bloody, yes,
but natural. It has precedence. A young boy grips his father’s hand
so that he doesn’t get lost in the crowd. The man grips his boy’s hand
so that he doesn’t lash out and start swinging aimlessly. He knows
someone must start a riot, but he doesn’t want it to be him. Solace
can be found in knowing this cannot last. Cicadas
awaken only for a few days, every seventeen years, before they’ve served
their purpose, and they die and scream no more. The guillotine
must drop, for what goes up comes down. And the crowd surely
thins out. People either disperse or the crush of bodies
leaves a dozen flattened and the rest weep then go home. It is said straws
break camels’ backs. But what if
this camel doesn’t have a back what if
its hump has been hollow this whole time, and inside exists a vacuum
that send straws spinning through infinity? What if
the crowd grows? What if
cicadas sing and sing and never stop, and what if
guillotines don’t drop but multiply, and objects in motion stay
in motion, and what if
this all started long ago, and history has not been an ebb and flow
of movements but a quiet build of madness that bursts beyond its margins as the crowd ignores
the calls to riot and becomes instead an orgy, creating yet more frightened revelers, all eager for
someone else to throw a punch, and the guillotine, it glints and grows and wants no head, wants
nothing more than to be sharp and poised but never to descend, and what if cicadas hiss their
song of summer through
the days that knows no night.