Rosanne Griffeth

BECAUSE MAGICICADAS HAVE NO EYES

We cram the food into our mouths to stop our screams. That’s what it’s about, it’s beyond comfort, love or any of those things.

The mother walks around like a piece of electricity. She doesn’t really do much, but the force of her being bleeds onto us. That restlessness in her, we can feel it in our bellies–a scratch that can’t be itched. It’s a craving, like the one for sugar, the one for love–that we want her to hold us, but at the same time–we just can’t bear it. It burns.

So we cram the food into our mouths to stop the screaming, because she is a force of nature and that’s what we do to stop the pain caused by her closeness. We no longer taste the food.

The father comes home from a long bad day and becomes Agamemnon. His mask, painted bright red like anger, distorts during his part. During his recitation of the long bad day, we strophe. Then antistrophe. Trying to escape, awaiting the sacred words:

Dinner is ready.

Between mouthfuls, there is conversation. The magicicadas are rising. They are leaving their skins on the trees. They are filling the night with noise. It’s a noise like the mother’s electricity overlaying the father’s long bad day.

Did you know they sleep in the ground for seventeen years?

We stop, poised with a buttered roll, yeasty and warm. Lucky, clever magicicadas! We are distraught with envy.

But they have no mouths. They make that sound beating themselves with their own wings.

We cram the rolls into our mouths and chew the vague gumminess. Magicicadas aren’t so lucky. They cannot eat and have found a new way to scream.