The Emptiness Of Peace

One day, a man; the next, a bug.  It’s a nightmare when you dream it as a man, in your troubled sleep.  It becomes a struggle for survival when you wake up as a beetle.  You wake in a wave of anxiety, not knowing if you’ll be able to make it onto your feet in time.  To roll your awkward bug body over before death begins to set in.  No arms, plenty of legs, kicking the air, hoping to eventually find ground to stand on.

After surviving the first moment of your day, after avoiding such a pathetic end as death by way of lying on your back, you wipe the sweat from your brow, your brow that would have been there if you still had a brow, if you were still human, and you take flight.

The ability to fly might be worth the constant thought of: “Don’t die.”  “Don’t die,” you tell yourself.  Not now.  Not like this.  “Don’t die.”  Don’t quit.  Make it to tomorrow.  Maybe you’ll end up as a man again.  

It’s when you fly that you forget your worries.  That you enjoy being a bug.  Even when the respectable humans take a swat at you.  It’s a thrill to soar above the ground.  You’ve never felt more alive.

As you travel through the sky, you look down upon the world you once belonged to.  The houses.  The tiny people.  Their streets.  Their cities.  The churches they take refuge in.  

The world seems different through bug eyes.  The sad loneliness is much quieter from the sky’s view.  As is the happy joy.  Life is silent in the beetle’s flight.  Still.  Cold and smooth.  Peaceful.

The wind is heard clearly.  The buzzing of the wings.  
It’s much easier for a bug to be alone, than it is for a man.