Look. I’m going to be very upfront here. I look down upon you. It’s my birthright as your queen. I make no bones about it.
Well, I didn’t elect you, I hear some of you murmur. Duh. Obviously you didn’t elect me. You don’t elect royalty. And anyhow, you’re insects. It’s my understanding that insects do not hold elections – as elections are a uniquely human way to pass the time. Like flying a kite. Or decorating your most favorite pink plastic suitcase with stickers from exotic places and then shoving it to the back of your sister’s closet until you need it again which is probably never because your dad and sister aren’t around anymore.
You cannot be my queen because you are a child, some of you say. And yes, that’s true. But so too is my mother. And Hal, the wizened bagger at the grocery store. Because isn’t every human nothing more than a child subjected to a mounting number of indignities known collectively as aging? This is something that you, as an insect, are not likely to understand, with your fancy exoskeletons that will never be riddled with atrocities like spurs, fractures, or arthritis. They are far more prone to crushing though. It takes a lot to crush a human skeleton (though the spirit is another thing altogether) buried under all the skin, muscles, and organs as it is.
And that is why I am superior to you.
If it is that which makes you superior to us, then so too is the bear, the wolf, even the lowly frog, says a particularly talkative grasshopper whom I could crush with one stomp of my foot. Or hand. Though that would be messier. And frankly, there’s no mazel tov in that.
Look, I say again but this time with a world-weary sigh for dramatic effect. First of all, I’m not sure why you would refer to the frog as lowly. Is not the frog more similar to you, grasshopper, than any other non-insect? To condemn the frog is an indictment of your own ability to leap over a building in a single bound. And I find this confusing. Here’s what I think. You see me up here on this moss-covered boulder staring down upon you and you wish you were human. Admit it and we can all move on.
I wish no such thing, the grasshopper scoffs. Yes, he actually scoffs. I didn’t know grasshoppers had it in them to scoff. What’s more, I see a spider roll her eyes at me. All eight of them, moving in perfect synchronization off to the right, straight upward, off to the left, and back to center like Suzuki method-trained dancers performing pirouettes. It’s impressive, really.
None of us wants to be human, says a stately praying mantis who, for some reason, sounds exactly like George W. Bush on helium. It’s mildly off-putting. Even so, I’m dazzled by his proper use of grammar. I immediately suspect that the insectular educational system is superior to the American one. Not surprising though. When I was in fourth grade, there was more than a handful of hopelessly… well, stupid kids. Billy, who sat behind me, for instance, told me that his mom couldn’t wash the windows of their house because his brother ate them. At first I’d thought he was kidding so I’d laughed. He didn’t laugh though. Then I thought maybe he was speaking in code; that perhaps he was one of those savant-type kids that do seemingly weird things (like line up different colored bottles or categorize cereal by fiber content or talk to insects) but are actually brilliant. The truth is, Billy was sitting in that same seat the following year. I was no longer in front of him though, except metaphorically. This gets me thinking.
Do insects ever get held back a grade? I ask a ladybug because I assume she might be an authority on such things. There’s sexism baked into this assumption, I know. Whatever the case, she slowly lifts her black-spotted red gull-wing doors to spread her wings and flies away. Rude.
My subjects go about their business while I sit on my rock throne and glance out over the land behind the house my mom and I share. I catch myself picking at the moss in the same way I pick at the hangnails on my fingers. There’s something peaceful in the way both the moss and the skin release from their anchors. It’s a nasty habit. Or so I’ve been told. I feel that’s an exaggeration though. A nasty habit would be something like smoking or smearing my feces across my shirt. Or someone else’s shirt.
A butterfly flutters by and I think of my sister. She’s been gone 462 days, 18 hours, and 25 minutes now. I’m not sure where she is. I hope it’s somewhere with peacocks though. She loved those silly creatures – always coming home from the Bailey’s farm with long turquoise, teal, and green feathers, fanning them across her face while reeking of peacock shit. How I despised that smell.
But now, like a dung beetle, I think I would savor it.
*(modified excerpts from When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz)