Written In Earnest

By Swati Mohana Krishnan

Yesterday I removed a corpse from my ear.

It was fully preserved; every limb was intact and a scientist would have declared it a marvelous specimen.

The colors were still bold, the eyes wide open and if I were to trick my mind, I'd still be able to hear it breathe.

It had experienced no mutilation, no violence in death and had entered my ear, alive, of its own accord.

Had it gotten lost in the noises of my ear drum? Had it failed to hear the ominous beats of its own funeral drum?

Had it perhaps been overwhelmed by the echo chamber of my ear where receptivity and resistance were locked in a bitter stalemate?

There was no sign outside my ear that said 'trespassers shall be prosecuted' or the simpler American variant, 'no entry'. Does this excuse it's curiosity?

Perhaps it was an adventurer, a traveler on a quest, who had taken an oath to map unconquered realms?

However, no one had prepared it for the nothingness in my ear. Had the void within me frightened the soul out of her? Or did the darkness within me consume the light of her life?

Did she perhaps hear a fatal secret which echoed and amplified in her being as she strove to escape the hidden realms in my ear? Or did the dirge of my nightmares petrify the wits out of her?

I will never know for the dead do not speak in a language that I understand.

When I removed her from my ear, she was carefully preserved in a light, invisible coating of ear wax.

Her wings were intact, her legs frozen in a final jump, she was laid flat on the tip of a white, cotton ear bud.

Poor little fly, why did you fly into me and lose yourself in me?

By Swati Mohana Krishnan