after the cicadas stopped singing

that’s the bench dad sat at when he could by the zoo without animals and the stage no one ever played and the grills that never fed anyone and the power lines where people sometimes lost their hair but he didn’t seem to mind the feel of the softening wood or the smell of burning ethanol or the absence that impregnated the unmoving air on hot days because sometimes the cicadas sang and if you breathed hard enough you could feel their hum in your lungs that didn’t seem to breath by themselves anymore or inherit the same songs they used to and he’d say if you listened close enough you could learn a lot about yourself and your purpose in the contraction of insect...View all