The gray sparkling dust on the charnel ground I’d made. The conceit I had, saying a prayer for each one I killed, sending it off with an om mani peme hung and wishes for it to be reborn into a better life. It saddened me, killing those things, and yet I saw no way out of it. The birdseed was alive with moth larvae, the wrappers pierced and riddled. Even after cleaning out the pantry, more moths. And so, my mindfulness for the first dozen larvae, for their suffering as I crushed them, then the next few dozen, each time the blessing given wearing thinner, thinner through my breath until what had been a blessing became a curse, until I gave up the pretense, killed them with predatory pleasure. I didn’t want them to suffer yet gave no mercy, no more prayers, no thought to their pain.
Their gift to me: to see myself clearly, this hollow reed ingesting and excreting, my sentience mere paint on a wrapper of chemical processes ending with my teachers’ guts and broken wings dotting the kitchen walls, oxidizing in the afternoon sun.
