cicada killers & your holy porch

we screamed like metal bugs
into the thickening dark.
both of us ghosts. both of us 
unzipping from all our exoskeletons. 
i do not know which version of you
i was talking to. 
your apartment was hot & luminous. 
i loved the nights i got to stay over.
there were only a few before
you moved in with me & we died. 
it is wonderful to get to be
a freshly guillotined flock
of wildflowers for a person
you want to keep you. you breathed me in.
my arms turning into windows.
sometimes, in the morning, i would
get up before you. i would 
sit in the kitchen, barefoot,
looking out at the porch. there
the cicada killers would congregate.
anger looking creatures. like giant wasps. 
what is it like to be named
after what you destroy?
i guess in a sense, that is how we
are all known. cicadas, from a latin word
meaning "tree cricket." 
only it is a loan word.
sounds from a long-buried language.
i think, in that language, it used to mean,
"song eater." i never wanted
to leave. always wanted a longer weekend.
a mouth to sleep inside. we drank coffee
on that porch too. 
the sun shaved our heads.
we hummed with the cicadas. 
hoped the killers didn't come.