Cricket Love

she creeps from coolness and safety
across a lot paved with
creatures of the night, dancing
to the rhythm of streetlamps' hum
and joining in the chorus of legs
and wings, tiny buzzing machines
littering the pathway to her
vehicle of escape, scraps of black
hopping and blowing around
in the stagnant air of summer,
and though she attempts to
outrun them, she is strangely
aroused as a few poor souls
find their way into the folds
of her dress...

and she remembers a day when
she didn't like bugs

- Stephen W. Brodie