My Mayfly

Poem

enate determination to persist to transform four times before the end to shed and zap and land and lust emerging from freshwater like Naiads before Eoraptor was even born the first winged creature more fairy then fly grew wings before the birds.

Tithonus named them Ephemeroptera, Odonata, Paleoptera and invited them to dine with all the other Gods, they sat by the Achelous Riverbed near the waterfall, terrestrial exhausted from giving birth 400 times they could not eat a thing three million years of practiced silence to survive the circle and protect the order repetition, a virtue for these queens.

my own Mayfly is fossilized beneath my skin, a keepsake, a reminder of who I am, of where I’ve been of no harm caused, perhaps… but when I pet, poke, pick, her little feet six times tempting her to leave, she is ready for another sacrifice.

Lennie Varvarides, March 2021, Thank you for reading, My Mayfly, inspired by J.D. Harms Saturday Poetry Prompt: a little different, (13 March 2021). Special thanks to Franco Amati for pushing me a little further.

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