Oh carpet beetle,
With your softly rounded, artfully mottled carapace
And delicately searching antennae,
You declare the arrival of spring
With your appearance on my windowsills,
Lured by the promise of pollen beyond the screen.
Your adorably fuzzy larvae
Announced winter,
Appearing unexpectedly on the shelf near the yarn jar,
Stealthily moving on from a pair of gloves and leaving
Nothing
Right in the middle of a cable,
A bullet hole ending the useful life of a sock,
Or a gentle grazing reducing a shawl to a jumble of
(beautiful, soft, expensive) string.
I wish I could apologize for the permethrin spray.
I wish my feelings of guilt for hunting you down could
Best my urge to hunt.
I wish I could say that our life together can ever return to
What it was before I knew,
Before I saw,
Before I understood.
But the nine small balls of Koigu on my chair say
“It is impossible.”
Call Me Not Naomi 