Haibun

Do you ever just google yourself to see what comes up?

    milkmaids

Sometimes, when I have insomnia, I’ll look at pictures of other Susan Burches to see if they look like me.

    pulling down

Or to read how they died. As if one of them somehow portends my future…

    the dawn

My friend and I are about to have breakfast at a small restaurant in Chapala, Mexico. Outside, a raggedly dressed man holds a hand-printed sign that tells us he is from Nicaragua and wants enough to buy a meal. My friend says we should ignore him because people like him are lazy. I speak Spanish, so I invite the Nicaraguan to come in and have a meal with us.

A woman at the next table says to me in English, “You are a very good man.” I thanked her with a smile.

sunset the short road to homelessness

I ran so hard and in such a panic that I somehow got a bitterweed flower tangled in my bubblegum, its acrid taste staying with me even today.

Earlier that morning, my brother and I woke up on our grandparents' farm to find all the adults strangely absent. After searching the immediate grounds, we headed for the pond, thinking they might have risen early to go fishing. No one was there, but when I tried to get my brother to leave, he wouldn't. He was charmed with 'the big swimming' pool', and at age seven, I lacked the strength to carry him or force him to leave. So I left.

When I returned home, all the adults were back. Seeing me come in alone, they asked what had happened to Keith. I had left him at the pond. And then we ran, not knowing what we'd find.

Later, my brother would tell a curious story.

Bethesda
an angel at the pool
stirs the waters

As the British Empire’s foremost entomologist, not only do I possess the largest taxidermy collection in the civilised world, I was once granted the honour of discussing a new species of beetle with Her Majesty Queen Victoria. Understandable then, that my death proved to be one of the most perplexing and sensational mysteries of the age. Even to this day, nobody knows how I ended up pinned and preserved alongside my most exotic specimens, a thousand moths swarming the window and blocking the light.

insectarium
fat larvae nestle
within cold meat