A Love Poem

I caught this crazy bug by the bulb
of my porch light
late one summer night.
Oh, it was gross, compound eyes
bulging black, the size
of dinner plates round.
Back hunched in a bug shrug,
razor legs long and thorned
with ball and hitch joints.
The skin, bone and horned,
a green eggshell encasing
the viscous bisque of pulp and sac insides-
Its body built a tank.
Antennae with feathery laced ends
glided over armored thorax.
Oh, it was beautiful.

I offered my hand
and its pricked toes dug into my palm.
I winced, but unafraid of blod
I closed my eyes,
cupped my hands at my chin
and let its feelers caress my nose.

And she coaxed me into her world.

She showed me the secrets that hid under dead grass.
Together we crawled over powdery mushroom bulbs
birthed through earthen mass,
their fibrous tentacles sucking nourishment
from everything the forest discarded.
She taught me which grey head to feast upon
and which would kill.
We tucked our bodies deep
in the grooves of flaking bark,
and leavened sill,
blending into trees rough grey skin
when birds flew overhead.

We walked together though seasons
of sleep moss and maggots
lurking under rotten logs.
My pink fleshy shell and her green bone skin-
she was careful not to poke me with her tines.

When we laughed we laughed hard
and her armor loosened with every joke.

Until one night,
when we lounged in the folds of white iris,
laughing at the face of the moon.
With a mighty guffa, her armor broke loose.
Gasping, I saw
her flesh showed pink
and soft-breathing like mine.
Her hair rolled from bug helmet,
black silken threads spilling in droves.
Thorns flaked away;
legs came from lifeless stilt
in a pile of exoskeleton.
She stood: a new flesh form,
naked in the silver light
and we laughed some more.