"Shelter" by Sarah Myers

Shelter

Sarah Myers 1.

In summer, the boxelder bugs writhe in clumps on the side of the house and bake their bodies on the hot brick. They lay piles of shiny red eggs on the sun-soaked back door. They feast in heaps on boxelder maples, their namesake and food source.

2.

And as summer turns to fall turns to winter, they just want warmth.

So they crawl through the cracks and make my house their home.

3.

Boxelder bugs do not bite. They do not sting. They do not stink.

They do not transmit disease. They do not eat human food or destroy any architecture. Once in a while, they fly—tiny, utterly unnecessary trips from table to floor, wall to light fixture, the sink to my hair. But, mostly, boxelder bugs are harmless.

4.

Still, I kill them.

5.

I kill them on the floor, the counter, the couch,

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the chairs, the table, the blinds, the windows, the walls, the stairs, the sink, the shower, the bed, my head, lying on my pillow, my sock, sitting on my foot, my finger, as I’m typing a P— and, once, inside the Britta pitcher, coming up from a swim in their own private pool.

6.

I kill them with a small strip of paper towel pressed as a prophylactic between my fingers, a small strip that turns into a boxelder bug family funeral plot. I collect as many bodies as possible in the same cloth and put them in the compost bin.

7.

I know they’re dead when they pop, when I feel a little ooze of bug body. The pop is disturbingly satisfying. Then, it is overwhelmingly sad.

8.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

9.

I’ve killed thousands.

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10.

My lover used to pick up their tiny bodies with a pinch and release them outside in the snow.

“They’re going to die anyway,” I said.

“So am I,” he said.

9.

So I start to let them live.

8.

They wander in strange circles, aimless and alone. There is no food for them inside, so death comes quickly enough. And then they topple over from the weight of their own bodies.

7.

Once, when I returned too quiet from the bathroom, I caught my lover cracking open the little hand-painted jewelry box on my bedside table.

“That’s not yours,” I said.

“I know,” he said. But he didn’t.

He wanted to see everything.

6.

Sometimes, a single boxelder bug catches my eye. Because it tiptoes towards me. Because it is not afraid. Because it exposes its little striped belly while it’s walking upside down. I could look at it for hours.

5.

Here is one on the lip of my laptop, searching the air with its antennae. It cleans its feline face with a two-toed foot, teeters on its red-rimmed carapace, weaves a slow, careful dance onto the

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warm winter skin of my hand.

It perches.

Waits.

Takes a few steps.

Stops.

Watches me.

I wonder what I look like through its tiny beads of eyes.

4.

It’s dragging its back left leg now—a small, dead weight behind its body, no wider than an eyelash, no longer than a fingernail. I want to make it a splint with a hair from my head.

3.

We lived our life in weekday afternoons hidden behind the blinds, sun seeping through the slats, bodies braided and warm on my stupid, purple velour sheets. We imagined a future in words, talking too fast and free (“Won’t our toothless gums feel so good on each other’s bodies when we get old?”), dreaming up trips to Tokyo, dress-up dates in bustling bars, hours lost in art museums, hands held out in the open. My lover wanted to be seen.

2.

Until we were.

1.

I rearrange the house now. Add a new plush sofa, end tables made of unfinished pine, plants in pretty porcelain pots, and single-stack bookshelves that tower in every room. The boxelder bugs spend their final days in a forest they can’t eat. But it’s lush and full of

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leaves and safe from the snow. I make the space into something no one else has seen but us.

0.

And when they die, warm and tired, they rest flat on their backs, legs folded up in prayer.