distress without a vocabulary

the crane fly does not know it is going to die.

apparently this is meant to make it less sad.

people like that kind of logic, detached, uncomplicated.

if a creature cannot name the room, the room is not a prison.

if it cannot understand death, death cannot be cruel.

if it has no word for hopeless, then hope cannot hurt it.

fine.

but it can see outside.

that is the rotten part.

the grass is there. the dirt is there. maybe another crane fly bumbling through its few ridiculous days of being alive.

everything it was made for is on the other side of something it cannot see.

and it keeps choosing the right direction.

that is the part that got me.

it is not lost.

it is not confused about what it wants.

it is flying exactly where it should fly.

and every time it does, the world hits it in the face.

it bounces off, untangles itself, and comes back to the glass.

not nobly. not beautifully.

crane flies are terrible at flying.

all knees and bad engineering, six legs arguing with one another, wings doing what they can with the parts they were issued.

still, it tries.

it throws its whole desperate body at the same patch of daylight until the daylight wears it out.

the window does not explain itself.

it does not say there is no way through.

it shows the creature the sky. it shows it the ground.

go, says everything the crane fly knows.

then glass says no.

I will not steal its death and call it mine.

the crane fly is not a metaphor just because I recognize the room.

it was alive.

it wanted out.

that should have been enough to matter.

but yes.

I recognize the room.

I know what it is to have freedom visible enough that everyone assumes it must be available.

there it is, they say.

what is stopping you?

they stand where the door is open and explain flight.

they watch you hit the same invisible wall and call it a pattern.

a failure to learn.

self-sabotage.

another bad choice.

nobody checks for glass.

maybe you move left.

maybe you move right.

maybe you become very clever about the dimensions of the prison.

the wall moves nowhere.

eventually the crane fly stops trying.

not because it understands.

not because it has accepted anything.

not because death became preferable.

a body only gets so many attempts.

then it is stiff, lying on the sill with the outside still shining through it,

inches from everything it spent itself trying to reach.

I sobbed for the crane fly.

I sobbed because it was alive and then it was not.

I sobbed because wanting out did not make an opening.

I sobbed because effort is not the same thing as escape,

and people love to confuse the two when they have never met the wall.

there is no lesson here.

the glass is still there.

outside is still outside.

the crane fly is dead.

and somewhere someone with an open door is getting ready to tell me

that if I had wanted it badly enough,

I would have flown.