Dreams of a Fruit Fly-Emily Kurn

While his brothers and sisters are rejoicing over the softening pear,
he dreams of quietly slipping away, looking back one last time at the fruit bowl.
He knows he was not put on this earth for fruit alone; he dreams
of rooms beyond the kitchen, of food beyond the fruit bowl,
of flying beyond the window’s glass and learning the language of birds.
He dreams of circumnavigating the house, traveling through each bedroom,
spending a week in one bathroom, a second week in the other,
a month or two in the garage. He dreams of new cultures, new bacterias,
new females for loving insemination.

He was a dreamer before he had wings. In the dim light of his puparium,
his larval mind would wander down dark alleys of imagination, the sound of jazz
drifting through open windows. And even though he came into the world this way,
he knows his family does not understand him. They are fifth generation fruit bowl,
it was his great great great grandfather who founded the Cedar St. colony almost
seven weeks ago upon the rotting of two purple plums and a single green grape.

And so, when it becomes clear
that there is a forgotten banana browning beneath the sweet potato,
he resists the urge to dive and instead lingers above the bowl and watches
his family’s mindless skittering over the sugary rot.

And then, with wings trembling and the sweet smell of fruit heavy in the air,
he breaks away toward the kitchen door and doesn’t look back.