Within two weeks, a female fly can live her entire life and
after thirty-six hours of adulthood, a female fly
is ready to conceive. She mates once, and stores
the rest of the sperm for future offspring. She lays one hundred
eggs at a time, every time she is ready, when she finds somewhere
damp and dark. There is room for life in the space of the dead.
In a nightmare, a fly lays one hundred eggs where my eggs are
and my womb holds larvae shortly after. What is organic
and decaying sustains the maggots until it is time to pupate.
I bear the babies I do not want in case there will never be
ones that I do. I feel like a mother when I am invaded,
when I rest among the dead and dying. My mother wants
grandchildren within the next decade, and I am quickly
running out of time to produce them, to reproduce myself
into something small and squirming, screaming, feeling
around for carcasses. I could live my entire life in two weeks
without any fruit and disappoint three generations at once.
In the nightmare, my eyes are red and I am winged. I sink
into manure with ten days left to live. I heave a legacy into
something’s rotting flesh and taste salt and blood.
I hear crying. Yes, mother. I took a breath and lived inside
my own lungs. I no longer need yours.