
The cicadas started scaling dense soil while I was in another state, hundreds of miles away from home, a hundred times farther than they’d ever travel. I returned to hollow husks, split along the back seam like a boy grown too fast for his new shirt. These exuvia are all the same brown color, light and shiny like parchment paper. They’re all fearsome, claws at the top of their three pairs of limbs, large round orbs for the eyes. A creature you’d never want to meet in a size larger than a human thumb. Even in their diminutive form, it’s easy to reach for terror in lieu of wonder. All those hollow, unhallowed shells crusting tree trunks and grass blades and park benches. Isn’t this how horror films start?
I made it home in time to watch one finish tugging itself free of its fifth instar, the final form of its subterranean nymph body. Fresh wings partially inflated with lymph, red eyes, pale body with two black spots behind its eyes. Within a day the whole body will be black, the wings outlined in umber, their translucence solidifying from the texture of tissue paper to the crisp firmness of film. The claws are gone, the red eyes endearing. The mature Magicicada does not make me think of monsters.
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