exist to submit: after the cicadas stopped singing

that’s the bench dad sat at when he could
by the zoo without animals
and the stage no one ever played
and the grills that never fed anyone
and the power lines where people sometimes lost their hair
but he didn’t seem to mind
the feel of the softening wood
or the smell of burning ethanol
or the absence that impregnated the unmoving air on hot days because sometimes the cicadas sang
and if you breathed hard enough
you could feel their hum in your lungs
that didn’t seem to breath by themselves anymore
or inherit the same songs they used to
and he’d say if you listened close enough
you could learn a lot about yourself
and your purpose
in the contraction of insect membranes
or the leaves on the trees that seemed to scream with the dying broods
and I never really knew what he meant by that
but I’d sit on that bench a lot after he was gone
and wonder when the mold would finally eat through the wood
or if there were ever any animals in the zoo