Malacosoma nostalgia
1 Minute Read Time
Star Lake, July 2003
It happened overnight, like waking to the first snow:
each tree branch bowing under sudden weight,
covered, every inch, in caterpillars. They wormed
around by the hundreds. Rocks appeared to vibrate,
bark looked to be swimming in algae. My cousins & I
spent the day sawing their fuzzy bodies in half,
just to make them gush green guts. Maybe it was revenge.
We ran from the lake to the towels on the rail, wrapped
them around our wet bathing suits only to feel dozens
of larvae suctioned & squirming on our skin.
I had never been jealous of my cousins’ pocketknives
until seeing what swift work they made of severing innards.
My scavenged sheet of bark like a meat-cleaver
left behind slimy massacres, brown flakes of wood
mixed with ooze. We did all of this with glee—
running wild, briefly unaccounted for. I wonder now
if ripping open flesh, stampeding around land & life
like we owned it was the best we could do. I keep finding
this slippery, severed nostalgia on my hands—
for a summer of invasive bugs, their teeming life force
setting the woods to motion even as they ate it down to twigs.
Read more from Issue 19.2.
