In June they’re everywhere, flying over houses and cars, on sidewalks, in trees. The eggs are tiny, less than the head of a pin.

You played Lou Rawls in the Rav as we headed down to Beaufort. I had my head on your shoulder. Of all the others, I was the One, you said. Your “lady love,” you said, and I believed you.

The rail line cut through the heart of town. With more reports of symptoms coming in—scratchy throats, headaches, nausea, burning in the nose, coughing, chest pain—one of the residents on Taggert Street, closest to the derailed cargo, berated the politicians. Not one of you have had the guts, he said.

One of 6,000 in the species, the robust mayfly burrows in the sediment and filters out the little bits of algae, cleaning it up, eating it. Its eggs are food for snails and largemouth. Sauger and the walleye, catfish.

Every neuron firing, every atom of my being was tingling, your face between my thighs.

Deadly if exploded, vinyl chloride consists of two carbon atoms, three hydrogen atoms, and one chlorine atom. Depending on the amount, the railroad estimates that the controlled release could burn for 1 to 3 hours.

Two years is a long time for an insect.

At 3:30 p.m., black smoke was billowing. Anyone who remained in the yellow impacted area was at a high risk of severe injury, including skin burns, serious lung damage.

Their iridescence lures the frog and fish, birds. Beetles. Females are a little more yellow, a golden color, and males are a little more orangey-brown, but only we see those colors.

You said you wanted one of every color: Black, brown, white. I was yellow.

To start the mating process the female flies into the swarm that is like chaos over water. They just stick on me and they get like, really annoying, 6-year-old Logan Essex said.

It is unknown when residents will be able to return. Chemicals move when they’re spilled into water or carried by the wind.

Impossible to know what the mayfly experiences, how it perceives the world. Is there pain?

The sky is liquid-gray—no, violet. I watch your outline in the Rav drive away.

– Kathleen Hellen

In our ECO LIT series, Red Canary Magazine dedicates space for established writers and emerging voices to imagine better ways of being.