I am never the one who seeks you. It is you who clings to my clothes as I enter the tower from the garden, with your impossibly emerald, liquid, and phosphorescent color, like a stubborn gem the size of a fingernail, guarding a tremulous and armored life.
Then, when I free you from the cloth, you thank me by anointing me with that stinky oil you secret from the sides of your shield. It evaporates in an instant and fills the air. And not only do I take a quick step away from the spot: a thrush hidden in the hedge also takes flight, while a lizard scampers toward its hiding place among the stones.
I understand, upon seeing them, that you sheltered yourself in me and, again, you grew frightened and with your stench you thanked me.
It is the same automatic trigger you employ whenever you find yourself in the mouth of a reptile or on the beak of a bird. Your bet is that no one will want to savor you despite your succulent color, like herb-pressed and distilled as the finest gin; only what you exhale is fetor.
You accomplish this by draining the sap from plants with that razor-sharp stiletto in your mouth. The aphid will not escape if it lies in your path; nor will your own eggs if you are hungrier than the tenderness of the plants.
Peaceful cannibal of blinding green, you will not be able to reproach a desperate reptile for swallowing you, nor will the sparrow rub its nostrils in the grass after devouring you to wipe away your pestilential oil. Accept it, your shield form serves you no purpose. And your dazzling bravado only serves to attract your enemies.
Thus tiny flies perch on your shell to impregnate you with their eggs, from which larvae with sharp jaws will be born that will gnaw into your body to enter it and devour you from within.
The wasps prefer to perforate the eggs you lay on the underside of the leaves, so that their offspring are born feeding on what should have been your offspring—if not carried away earlier by ants, who care little that they are invaded by other larvae.
That is why I celebrate the miracle of discovering you. Because you are the radiant gardener, and you regulate the overgrowth of plants and do not allow every square inch of earth to be overrun. For that reason, gardeners rightly fear you, and among us you also accumulate enemies.
Wretched stink bug, you keep doing your work surrounded by danger and anxiety, and the many troubles do not prevent your beauty or your purpose. In the same way, every day I suck in the tenderest books and scatter my creations on the undersides of leaves, in the marvel of electrons, in the ink of cellulose, while energies beyond my control swirl around me.
But I have gleaming green mirrors on my fingertips. They are the size of a fingernail, and they whisper to me about the mysterious spirit of life.