Cicadas Are Probably Sleeping
Maggie Farren

There is the time of the year when the shadows grow lean and lengthy and
I pull skeletons off the playhouse.
Papery and delicate:
cicadas can split their skin at the spine,
leave their legs still grasping at rough wood.

 

Each autumn,
I collect cicada shells and do not crush them,
keep small shadows of bugs
on my window sill or desk.
Watch the sunlight stream through a translucence,
absence-of-body.