Natural History
Pat idles his way up the local museum’s marble steps, and into the natural history section. He looks around. There’s no one to chat to today, only the exhibits.
He makes his way slowly round the collection, lingering by his favourites: the insects, especially those that shimmer or fly. Pat loves the emerald beetle’s bright iridescent shell, the blue weevil’s opalescence, the planthoppers’ glimmering thinner-than-tissue wings… All so small, they could pass anywhere unnoticed.
He is peering at the moths and wasps when a young man in his late teens appears reflected in the glass. The youth’s closeness startles Pat and he jerks away, wondering how he didn’t hear any footsteps on the stone floor.
“It’s all wrong,” the youth says. “Keeping live animals confined in cases like that!”
“Erm…” Pat splutters.
“Look at the way it’s flapping its wings trying to escape!” The youth points at the motionless Blue Hairy Flower Wasp.
Pat is puzzled. He thinks the same about zoos, protested against them as a young man, but, while he’s often imagined the museum’s creatures alive, he knows they aren’t.
“Are you ok?” he asks, noting the shadows under the young man’s eyes, a slight shake in his hands.
“I’m not taking any more meds,” the youth says. “The world’s more beautiful this way.”
Pat nods. The youth jerks away from the older man’s gaze.
“Perhaps, it might be an idea to talk to someone,” Pat suggests. He edges further from the youth and gestures towards the reception desk.
As Pat brushes past the end of the moths and wasps cabinet, he glimpses a flutter of blue wings.
He looks back at the youth, but the young man he’s been talking to has gone.
Pat stares into the exhibit case. The Blue Hairy Flower Wasp is motionless. Pat’s own now wrinkled teenage face gazes back at him from the glass even darker and more deeply shadowed than before. He feels his hands shaking.
Sarah James/Leavesley is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer. Her latest collection is Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic (Verve Poetry Press, 2022) and she is currently working on a novel and a novel-in-flash. Website: www.sarah-james.co.uk.
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