Cicadas

Cicadas

My husband sang Cicadas! as he brought in
a basil bouquet from the garden, its peppery,

green scent dense under my knife. Cicadas!
Already winding their mainsprings to whir

and chitter through the night. Summer must
be shrinking I thought, remembering my

last August before college and an odd virus:
high fever, cough. I caught it when no one

I knew was sick. How interesting! Also, what
a goof! Ill, well—ill again within a week! I

still met my hippie friends on the midnight-
empty golf course. Bell-bottoms damp at

our ankles, we sprawled on newly-mown,
much-too-irrigated grass in black darkness,

orchestras of cicadas encircling us. When
I tried to rise, cough-laughing, my woozy

knees buckled and my boyfriend pulled me
up and carried me the half mile home. My

mother called my name as I clicked our back
door lock. Yeah. Think I'm getting sick again,

I answered. Oh, dear, she said. Nothing more.
I managed the two flights of stairs to my room,

dropped onto my bed like an early leaf, never
found out the name of what took me two weeks

to beat. My radio offered one truth: I Walk On
Guilded Splinters by Dr. John the Night Tripper.

I shivered, yanked blankets. Were the words truly
'till I burn up, 'till I burn up? Soon I'd pack for

school. Could cicadas zip who I'd have to be and
summer's end too into my brand new empty bag?