The wings are
everywhere. They are piled in corners
like silvery grey snow drifts. They have
accumulated in the dishes that are drying.
They have plugged the drains and they have filled the sink. They are floating in the toilets and they
have dusted the tops of tables. I tried
in vain to sweep them outside, but they stuck to my ankles and filled my shoes.
I made an effort in vain to wash them out of the shower, but they swirled
around my feet. Pairs of wings, single
wings, broken wings, wings with veins of silver thread, all as long as a ring
finger have filled the house. The swirl
in clouds when the doors are opened and shut, and the flit gracefully out of
drawers. The wings.
Last night it rained
epically hard. It was like being on the
set of a movie where they are using a rain machine. Except there was nothing contrived about this
rain. It rained biblically, and in turn,
there was an exodus of white ants (termites) that flowed forth from the
earth. It sounds dramatic, but at times
last night it was hard to hear the roar of the rain over the pounding flutter
of wings. The White ants were drawn
magnetically to our lights in the house.
They were pulled towards our safety lights outside as if by
gravity. They seeped through the cracks
in the doors and windows like water and many made it inside. They made it inside and rushed chaotically,
like a flooding river around the lights, and they lost their wings and began to
die.
I eventually shut
myself in my room in the dark to avoid the incessant flurry of insects and I
fell asleep to the sound of wind, wings, and rain. In the morning I came out to survey the
damage. The blizzard of wings had
settled. I began the process of sweeping
them up and moving them back to the outdoors.
I tried to eradicate the house but the wings were to feathery to sweep,
so I just pushed clouds of them as well as I could. Once they were outside (with the white ants
they had been attached to) I poured insecticide on them.
Then our colleagues
arrived and lambasted me for killing and
wasting a delicacy. Then I ate a
handful.
