I spend too much time at home. Sometimes, when I move around the house, tiny creatures are escaping me, balancing in thin air or hiding in cracks and cavities of sorts. I’m positive those are not insects, although a carless observer who stumbled upon them would surely mistake them for such; it’s easy to be misled, but I know it’s too cold outside for any late fly to survive at this time of year. To be perfectly frank, these ubiquitous children of the summer never bothered me much, whereas the small fry I see at my place-when I lift a coffee mug, when I’m rolling a cigarette, as likely as not to be living inside my tobacco and in the breadbox-is a particularly disturbing amalgam of monocular jellos and shelled tripods, abyssopelagic himantopuses… things we don’t even have names for at this rate.

I have an impulse of squashing them when I’m standing there with my face covered with my hands, cringing, yet again shocked at how numerous they have become. Though it seems the encounter doesn’t bear the same emotional weight for all of us, and they are back to competing for resources in an instant. Dancing arabesque of tiny legs, swimmerets and pedipalps, in love with the notion of love. I feed them with challah and allow them to nurture their dream. See, if you believe that you are bound by a place, it becomes your prison. But if you do not wish to leave, it can become your fortress. Please stop bothering us.