On the Proper Use of Mosquitoes
On the Proper Use of Mosquitoes Roppotucha Greenberg (Originally published in TwistinTime Mag) They won’t let me sleep. My father, a halo of insects around his head, is singing of Robbie Burns’ heart that’s apparently ‘in the highlands a-following a deer’, in Russian first, then in English. Drink always made him jolly, and it earned him our neighbours’ respect (before they met him they’d thought Jews didn’t drink). The night is silly, all soft grey light and drunk Zglevian songs. The insects buzz knowingly; he will be theirs soon. Should I warn him? I could say: ‘Avoid, cancerogenic foods’, ‘Don’t smoke forty cigarettes a day’; ‘When they bring in free-trade try to make money slowly to avoid stress’. But will that scare him? I am the child He loved; I am the Girl from Earth; I am an emissary from the future. My knowledge is His undoing. In my night dress, my hair messed up, my toes curled on the gravel, I look like a ghoul. Ghoulishly, I walk towards the fi