My son held a ladybug
in his fingers once and
asked me: “What is dead?”

I didn’t have an answer.

I asked myself the same
once, as I sat and watched
a ladybug drown in my coffee.

She tried to swim and I
imagined her mouth -
gaping and gasping for air.

I didn’t move to help her
as she thrashed for the last time;
her body slowly dragging in spirals.

The ladybug was so
small and red I thought it
looked a little like blood.

I never wept.

Back in his room on the floor,
my son sat looking at me in
all his three year old innocence.

On the carpet her body had
been pulled apart - legs crumpled,
red wings held gingerly in his hands.

I looked at him with all my adult
wisdom, but he only ever asked the
one question: “Mama, is she dead?”

And we both wept.

04/16/2010

Posted on 04/16/2010
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