Specimen (2026)

There is a bright room

deep within me

(I carry it always):

inside the room

is a specimen.

Man, yes,

but no man at all:

an iridescent beetle.

The beetle is in a

dome terrarium

suspended on

a pin, mounted

on a mound of

mossy flock.

Every day

my phantom

footsteps ring

on warped

floorboards in

an imagined

Eyreian attic

when I fling open

ungreased doors to

The Specimen Room.

I breach the dusty threshold

and observe the specimen

from a distance. I couldn’t

bear to scare it into flight.

I’ll walk a circle around

its small wooden table,

absorbing the light from

its shell, hopefully without

the thing noticing.

(It’s dead.)

(I know this.)

I have done this

routinely since

the day I learned

it was wrong

to be in possession

of the beetle.

I can’t abandon it.

I tried throwing it out.

It flew right back

through my window and

burrowed into my mattress.

(It was never

too-too dead.)

I would paint it,

or write a song for it,

but half the colors I’d

want to use are UV and

all the pitches too low

and soft to be caught

by the human ear.

The piece is

meant for the bug,

after all.

Now it’s

settled for the moss

mound. And it’s not even

real moss.

(My god—if only I were the moss.)