Poem Due Today

DEET

We had an Indian summer that year, and the heat in the air from August carried into mid-October. I could taste it like oil, thick, resting on the back of my throat, a mix of sweat and swampy, stagnant water. Mosquitoes bred in cesspools in my backyard. They clung to the fluorescents in my bathroom and greeted me each morning with a low hum, an octave below the lights. It was the score to a cantata, and I sung mood lyrics at a whisper while I shaved and combed gel through my hair, flicking away the mosquitoes that landed on my skin.

In Italy, they call them zanzare. This is my favorite Italian word, of the six that I know. I learned it from my summer roommate, Enzo, who would swat the back of his neck and spit, “Dio mio, queste cazzo di zanzare,” while he sipped his beer on our back porch. He never said it in anger, but with more of a quiet acceptance, in jest. 

To Enzo, it was funny to come to America for one summer of liberty and freedom and wind up sleeping in the basement bedroom with bleeding bug bites. I would have been livid, manic-depressive if it were me, dropping my life savings on a trip to stay in a house with slanted stairs, drinking nothing but warm, cheap beer. That is the difference between the American and Italian constitution, I guess, happy with the status quo.

Enzo and I grew close over the summer, and would sit on the porch steps at night, talking while the sun set, our bodies sprayed down with insect repellant. We cracked open beer bottles and ate ham sandwiches on caraway seed bread smothered in mayonnaise. I enjoyed it so much that I suffered mosquito bites on the backs of my legs and shoulder blades and earlobes for it. It was a nice moment in time, to feel connected, a part of something, as opposed to floating through the air like a bubble about to burst, intangible and raw.

Our backyard was a mess, an empty plot of cracked earth and one tree, its roots lifting out of the soil and branches thick with rot. Water collected in pockets, where worms slithered in and out of the ground, coated in mosquito larvae. Enzo liked to lie back and observe, ask me English questions about anything he saw.

“Lucas,” he said to me once, mouth full, accent blanketing his sentences, “what do you call these, the light ones?” He gestured around him, half a sandwich in his hand.

“Fireflies.”

One landed on the railing, tail turning on and off at a slow tempo, like a fading beat at the end of a long song that leaves you breathless.

“Fireflies, ah. Like they are on fire. Does not really make a sense, does it, amico?”

I sipped my beer, “What do you mean?”

“What fire do you know that does a this?” He opened and closed his hand quickly, widened his eyes.

“Blinking?”

“Yes! Blinking!” He snapped his fingers and pointed at me. “No fire is doing this.” He waved his hand dismissively, set down his sandwich and picked up his beer, the label peeling off of the glass.

“Some people call them lightning bugs.” I watched one hover by his ear, light glowing green off of his black hair.

“Ah! Now lightning bugs, this is making more sense, no? On, and then bam!” He slapped his knee, smiling. “Gone.”