Isn’t it too soon

for the cicadas to be singing

like this?

When I was a child, I read

in a book that it takes exactly 14

or 18 years for them to emerge

from their burrows underground—in other words:

how long it takes a boy

to learn the meaning

of loss

or how long it took you

to teach me something else. Winged,

they leave their little

bedrooms in the earth

and fly straight for

the trees, never to look

back. They spend the rest

of their short lives there,

as music, rubbing

their brittle and see-through bones

together to find love and

nothing else. If they’re lucky,

they see the full moon once

before they lay their eggs

and die, and the cycle

repeats. Shouldn’t it still be so

silent tonight, and every other

night? I swear, I already heard them

last summer. But here you are

beside me, twilight’s chorus loud

and hidden in the canopy of branches

above us: the whole forest

humming a harana

and swansong to nobody

and everyone—even

the stars.

Maybe on this nameless

mountain where my mother dreamed

of growing old, the cicadas

are different.

I take your hand in mine

and you tell me

you hear them, too.

You look at me

as if they’ll be singing

forever.