Bugs on the Break Room Ceiling

I love a good metaphor. It’s what we’re made of, after all. What is “human” but a metaphor we make of a skin sac full of carbon, bacteria, and chemicals? Recently, I was looking for a good metaphor to describe a feeling, and landed on a memory of the time my coworker found three dead stink bugs embedded in the break room ceiling. Thus, the birth of today’s draft.

Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThey never cleaned the break room so well --at least not spaces above eye level.It was no surprise to find stink bugs attached to the ceiling tiles.The surprise was they were dead.Had been for a while.Clinging on with something like determination,like the harsh word of a long-gone teacherthat hooks into the soft places of the bodydemanding attention for long-dead messages,waiting for a steady hand to release itallow it to crumble into the dust it always was.