AFTER I WATCHED MY MOTHER DIE, I COULDN'T BRING MYSELF TO KILL ANOTHER LIVING THING by Charles Jensen

After I Watched My Mother Die, I Couldn'T Bring Myself To Kill Another Living Thing

by Charles Jensen

hush · issue 8

Even flies. Even spiders. I scooped them
        in a cup to liberate them on
                 the free side of the patio door.

Each life felt essential. The housefly's
         twenty-eight-day existence
                   equal to a cycle of moon, so

each slice of face would be seen
         just once, its wax and wane
                  an unfathomable miracle. Twenty-

eight days was how long I lived
         in my parents' house before she
                 passed. I cooked her meals

and we watched Drop Dead Diva
       but I will always remember
                we searched the closet for photos

of my grandmother in her youth
       to send back to her. In one box
               with the pics my mom had tucked

her workout gloves. Don't throw
        those away, she told me. I'll need
                 them again. In five days she'd be

dead. But we didn't know that then.
        Instead, I believed her and have never
                 forgotten her resolve. Flies slow down

before they die, making them easier
        to swat. It seems sometimes like they
                 invite the act. Spiders live for years.

Maybe they keep track based on webs,
       or fertility cycles, or changes in weather.
                 They weave over and over the same

design. I read spiders fear
         their prey, which is why they
                  trap their food, sealing

it in web so they can liquefy it
         like a protein smoothie. Sometimes I
                  think cancer did that to my mom:

wrapped her in dry-leaf skin, melted
         organs into a nondescript mass
                 until she couldn't breathe. I held

her hand when she passed and found
        it hard to let it go. Just a week before
                 I believed she'd survive it all. Just a week.

She dropped her fork while
        taking a bite of lunch. That was how the end
                 began. With a clatter. And the end

of the end was a breath. Do flies
        breathe? When they fly into a web
                and catch, do they know what's

to come? At the end of Psycho
       Norman Bates is dressed like his mother
                in custody. He sits alone in a holding

cell. We hear her voice express
         how she will fool them all. A fly lands
                  on his hand, scurries around. Look,

Norman imagines the police will
      say. She wouldn't harm a fly. She, too,
               has seen how death obliterates.

Flies love the dead. They eat flesh
         and plant their babies in the body's
                  ripe soil. Death is their beginning.

In the midst of flies, we are
        in death. Let them live. One day
                 our bodies will nourish them.