I am sorry for the late reply
I live a day, and then I die
And some of you may wonder why
But it’s just another day in the cycle of a mayfly.
Late Reply
Published
"When I am writing, I am trying to find out who I am…" –Maya Angelou
Writer In Retrospect 
Artfully crafted, Rachel, as usual.
Yet, you do reply, thus replenishing the cycle.
If anyone sympathizes, it’s I. Hey, life happens. Sometimes it’s family commitments. Other times, it’s friends. In keeping with the theme, all of us aren’t social butterflies, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have our own outside interactions from time to time.
Maybe an immediate response isn’t forthcoming. That doesn’t mean we’ve done something wrong, or that the author has decided to give up blogging. Sometimes it’s something as simple as a vacation. Or, after sitting in front of a screen all day for the 9-to-5, a few hours more of the same don’t appeal, particularly.
Still, we do find our way back, and that’s the important part.
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Thanks.
I suppose so. I still feel guilty though. Especially when I don’t have a very good reason…
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I can’t even imagine life like a mayfly.
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No? And here I thought most of us had something in common with mayflies (particularly the Buddhist ones). It goes like this: you wake up. You’re a grumpy, terrible person. The day goes by. Stuff happens. You sleep like the dead.
Then, you wake up again. You’re an optimistic, kind, patient person. The day goes by. Stuff happens. You sleep.
You wake up. Sort of. You’re barely a person at all. The day drags by. Very little happens. You go to bed.
And wake up as a wonderful person again…
Etc, etc.
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Wow. You’re a more developed mayfly than I. 😉
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Hah! For better or worse. 😅
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Such a neat, little, rhyme-y piece.
What’s your preferred form? Long or short? Rhymes or no?
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I generally prefer short (or at least, relatively short) poems. Easier for me to keep with some semblance of a theme instead of droning on and on, losing all sense and interest. I think I might still do that anyway… But I digress.
I also prefer rhyming. For me, rhyming and poetry are very closely entwined; I have to be in a very specific mood to be able to write a poem without rhymes and still be able to call it a poem. Plus, it’s kind of interesting to find which rhymes one’s mind jumps to, and how (if at all) they can work together.
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I think my best poems were rhymed, too.
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“Were?”
You know, it’s never too late to change that to “are…”
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A friend came over recently and forced me to write. We started a piece together line by line. But then it got late. It felt… interesting. (It didn’t rhym, though)
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Hehe… Good friend. 😉 I used to do something like that with my sister, often when I was lonely or sad. Of course in our case, it was a story we’d write line by line, that would invariably end (and very often start, as well) in tongue-in-cheek ridiculousness. I enjoyed it immensely; it helped me feel less alone.
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We have lots of them here in Michigan – they are mayflies or fishflies – take your pick. They hatch and live one day and die unless they “go down the hatch” of a hungry fish. When I worked at the diner in the 70s while going to school, the building was painted white and open 24/7/365 (except Christmas and Thanksgiving). The place was lit up every night and the mayflies would congregate there in the early morning hours. My boss would have someone stand by the door when we got deliveries (lots of deliveries) to ensure no mayflies flew in. They have so many near the waterways that the car tires crunch when rolling over them.
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I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen a mayfly in the flesh. Sounds like they’d probably drive me crazy. Heck, they’re driving me crazy right now… I can practically hear that crunching. And strangely enough, it immediately brings to mind insects being eaten as delicacies. *Shudder*
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Rachel – I am no fan of bugs, believe me, but mayflies at least are almost transparent and their bodies are pretty lightweight and I have been down walking along the River when there are mayflies and they rarely land on you. But I know in places where there are marinas, that they lay eggs and they hatch and they all hatch at once. I’ve never seen the pictures of the cars going through the masses of bodies, but I have heard people describing it. It sounds horrible. I have seen pictures of a bank building where swarms of mayflies are around the kiosk for banking outside. It was horrible to see. I was cleaning out the hummingbird feeder today – last time as it is getting cold next week. I have a saucer-type dish and I pulled off the lid to wash it and a spider had sneaked (snuck) into the port where the hummer drinks from and was on the underside of the lid. I almost flew out of my skin – I am very scared of spiders. Luckily I flicked it into the sink and the hot water was running and it went down the drain. It’s a wonder I did not throw the lid as I was so scared. Lost a year off my life! I have an irrational fear of spiders and centipedes. Good thing this was on the last day of hummingbird feeding and not on the first day.
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As long as they leave you alone, I suppose they’re not all bad. Ugh, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near that kind of swarm though.
There’s nothing irrational about fearing spiders. They have too many eyes, they’re too small (or too big), and they’re just too… Crawly! Centipedes I’ve never really thought about before. I can never remember which is the centipede, which is the millipede, and which one is venomous; and I don’t encounter enough of either to be bothered by it usually.
I just made the mistake of searching “centipede” and looking at the images, however. I didn’t realize there was a variety that got that big… I think it’s safe to say I’m never moving to South America.
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I can deal with millipedes – they just wiggle when they walk and have short legs – it is the centipedes with their thousand legs that gets to me every time. We’ve had wonderful weather here – two weeks with no rain and now rain every day and suddenly much cooler so it’s a good reason for bugs to want to get into the house, come up the drains or registers. I do not like going down in the basement when it is dark outside – I know it sounds silly, but seeing a spider or centipede down there just does me in. It is worse upstairs but if I go downstairs to do laundry and then go back to take stuff out of the dryer and see one, I just stop in my tracks. I wish I was not that afraid of them. I will usually only do laundry in the morning if it Summer and light is coming in the window or I do it during the day on the weekend. I had all those little ants this Spring and the last few years … never had them before and other people would say “do you have ants in your kitchen or bathroom for about 2-3 weeks every May?” I’d always answer “no” and then about five years ago, I started getting them too. The last two years it is in my bedroom where they are the worst. They come into the house and crawl on the walls, on the ceiling and fall down on the bed. Yes, they are little, but I was paranoid they’d bit me in my sleep. I got some liquid ant traps but they didn’t help and then after 2-3 weeks they are gone. I dread it every year. I’ve seen some of those ugly big bugs they have in tropical places – I’d probably faint if I saw one.
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To be fair, there’s something extremely disquieting about little things crawling around you while you sleep… Just the other day, my brother was teasing about how many spiders people swallow in their sleep on average. He was joking, of course; but how can people be not bothered by that? As unlikely as it is to actually swallow a spider while sleeping, it still makes me itchy and paranoid just thinking about it…
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I am laughing as I read what your brother said as my mother told me the same thing. I had a centipede in my bedroom about six weeks ago and it was “at large” and I had nowhere else to go to sleep. Stuff is so cluttered in my house right now so I could not use the couch, but when I went to bed, it was under the blanket, in a little ball, hoping it would not come after me in the morning. 🙂 aqa
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Ha! Ah, yes, that is a dread I know well…
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I can top that story … at least it was not in my room this time. We have not had a lot of rain this Summer/Fall but when it rains, it seems it is an all-day event. Such was this past Sunday … an all-day rain. I only go in/out the side door, only using the front door for getting the mail. So, Monday I opened the door in the living room to get the mail and the hugest centipede ran down the doorframe in between the steel door and the screen door. I let out a scream and closed the door and went around the side of the house and out front (good thing it wasn’t the middle of Winter). Nothing in the mail is important but the mailman never closes the lid – ever! I’ve asked – I quit asking, but it looks like no one is home and if I get something in there (like my boss mails my paycheck), it might fly away. So, I shut the door hoping I’d squish it in between the door and doorframe, but as I slammed the steel door shut, it moved. Oh no – I won’t open the front door now – I don’t know if it ran under the door sweep and is long gone or lurking in between. I bought a crockpot about six weeks ago and needed to get a cover for it which I ordered online a month ago … finally, it came by slow boat to China (Fed Ex then U.S. Mail) and arrived today. If I order something I put a note on the door to please knock as we have porch pirates – I didn’t want to open the door in case it was there. I had to go around the front – the tracking info didn’t work, so I had to keep going around. I hope it suffocates. Soon. 🙂
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Haha! Aw, man. 😂 I almost pity the centipede. To unconsciously inspire such fear… Ah, the life of insect; must be a lonely one
On second thought… I hope it suffocates too.
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Well, I put my big girl pants on today and decided to get rid of it it – we are having rain next week and my mailman leaves the lid up and not going out in the rain around the side of the house. But I was brave to an extent. I never go in/out the front door, but I opened the screen door from the outside, trembling the entire time. It was nowhere to be found. I guess maybe it went out under the door sweep. Whew! I would not open the door since I found it crawling up the doorframe on Monday morning! P.S. – I didn’t see guts where I closed the steel door on it either … it escaped in time. Bet it will seek revenge though … it figured out my intentions. 🙂
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Good for you! One less thing to worry about. Maybe it’ll seek out better targets… The mailman, maybe?
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I was happy too – I looked to see if it came in under the door sweep and it didn’t seem airtight, but … I hope it does not decide it was warmer there than outside and returns. It was big enough to sic on the mailman!
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