Fair Play (Album Leaf)
A fly is dying on my windowsill.
I must prove again that I am not a liar and a cheat. The state demands forms and letters, presented in person, to be sure I am disabled. The trip will cost me days in bed. The able-bodied can apply easily online.
Why should I choose light, when the worst is assumed of me—that I lack social conscience? I am almost housebound. I could pull the wings off the fly. No one would even know.
A clean death is one thing: I would swat a fly without thinking. But to make it suffer? That is my weakness. I am kin, at least to a housefly.
The clerk at the counter wanted to care. You could see it in his eyes.
outside my window
between the dust devils
a mourning cloak
Notes for next time:
I’m reframing these as “Album Leaves” rather than haibun. I would love to write something with the openness of haibun—I would really like to experience that. Instead I keep writing pieces with a point. But I’m loving the way the haiku changes the flow of time from more-or-less linear, with forward pull, to something more three-dimensional.
This haiku probably doesn’t “shift” enough for a real haibun—it’s a deepening or expanding of register, not a linked thought that moves in a new direction. I’m okay with that for now—it still adds a lyric “outside of time” quality that I want.
I don’t think like a Buddhist. (Not a criticism, just an observation.)