Pairing Mantids

He has only one job to do. A nd she, with her hunger, her need to feed the f ut ure without him by consuming him, has a lot to get done before winter. His head tilts slightly, like a sinner at communion, like a teen expecting his first k iss to be like lightning. T hen his body star ts to do the work it was built to do. She t ur ns toward him and wipes of f his face. He k nows it’s all over, but his body keeps on, unk nowing itself. His is the k ind of st upid happiness you can only appreciate at a distance, the k ind you k now cannot be as good as it look s. Hers is the work of dut y and a dif ferent devotion. W hile he takes her f rom behind, she takes him head first just like she took a yellow str iped hor net who would have taken her to his own hideaway, just as she took the grasshopper who was tired of summer, as she took the large green moth who had no mouth of its own. She ignored those magnificent wings — just let them fall — as she ignores the thr usting body that falls away f rom hers. He dies t wo deaths at once, the deaths of love and of life. But the moment bet ween, the moment before it all ends, is the moment of his glor y and the beginning of her toil.

— Paul Jones

Paul Jon e s is th e auth or of W hat t he Welsh a nd Ch inese Have in C ommon