“What were you thinking?” I asked the beatle, brilliant green shell scraping its rough back along a narrow patch of concrete.
For an hour now it lay upside down, traveling the sidewalk, fight for the fight and flip just to flop over once more, one more again, on and on its little legs gripping the fridged air above them.
“I could help, though the effort begs explaination given your want to fail.” I concidered this, his want (I assume it is he, as stupid as its acting.) for failure.
“Poor friend,” I continue, “What makes you improve your lot, then with the same effort toss the improvements away?”
Certain he had nothing to say on the matter I carried on, “Not saying your waisting your time mind you, not at all. No, I’d just as soon lie there with you, nothing to do but struggle against the unseen, for the sake of it for that matter, if it weren’t for a paycheck.”
As I’m speaking to him a pair of co-workers, eyeing me suspiciously brush by, each of them taking at least the slightlest care not to wreck my companies condition. When they’ve gone far enough I lean back down to his fidgeting feet,
“Aren’t you a lucky one!” He answers by flipping over and, after taking a few steps, tips back onto his wings and begins to wrestle the air.
All of this is strange to me, the motion, the involuntary, though seemingly willful act of continuously tossing yourself over just to fight your way back before tossing yourself over again. I feel the urge to carry him with me, this hopeless insect. Yet how far would I take him? How far is far enough? Where is he going anyway? No where at this rate, so no matter how far I keep him he may yet do better then here, on ground, on the fringe. In the fight.
I take him up by my hand and walk across to my living unit, there is a fence blocking me from the rest of whatever and I take a second to carefully place him on it. Apparently this was far enough. He looks back at me, or at least I’d like to think he does, or even can, just before spinning up his wings.
I watch there quietly as he takes flight, brushing past me without a sound back in the direction we came. After a second of losing him in the glow I spot his decent, and laugh to myself as he lands, without much difficulty, right back down on the very spot I’d picked him up.
“Some things must be just that,” I say to myself as I step inside, “Things.”
****
Matthew L. Newton
DOC #81868
