Plomp, Plomp, Plomp

There's a cricket on the sidewalk. And there's a toad. Plomp—the weigh of the toad slaps the sidewalk; a dreadful boggy sound that must rattle the exoskeleton of the cricket. It twitches an antenna. Plomp, goes the toad, and the bug is in real danger. Plomp. Does it fail to realize it's plight? Plomp. Or is frozen? Is it resigned? Plomp, plomp, plomp, goes the toad. The cricket skitters a few inches away. It is not enough. The toad as all the time in the world. Plomp, plomp, plomp. Relentless. The toad always wins.

I lie on the hard, grey, hideous wood-print floor in the dark. Today there was this, and tomorrow there will be that, and my heart is all bent like a car wrapped around a telephone poll. When you love every atom in the universe with all your heart—!—but, oh, how they disappoint you! I slap my hand, toad-like, against the laminate and mouth the sound, plomp, plomp, plomp. A Greater Toad is coming for me, and there's no avoiding it. Plomp, I say to myself again, striking the floor.

Crickets are hideous creatures, if you ask me. As bad as cockroaches. The nauseating spawn of moist, decaying moss and the places where the grass has gone brown not with drought but with putridness.

And yet. I can't help rooting for this unvaliant underdog. The wet tongue will do its sticky job; and, after four or five half swallows, the toad will get its lips around the bug and swallow. But how can I wish for that inevitable climax.

The atoms disappoint you, yes; and the disappointment disappoints! It is not steely and deadly and romantic as it has every right to be. It very cramped and painful and banal, like a sore tooth.

And the words disappoint you, they always do. They never bring you close the way you magically thought they could. You say all the right words in exactly the right order to send a thought, perfect and undamaged, from your mind to theirs—it's a miracle. And, in spite of that, they look at you with hostile, scared eyes; and the chasm remain between you.

It's the modern condition? I believe that. At the same time, it's the timeless condition. Me, on the floor. The toad. Plomp, plomp, plomp. And the toad always wins.