Life can be so simple.
Extracting blood, refreshing the flow, soft-muscled leeches suck on grafted skin,
tearing holes, reviving veins while humming bees are shifting pollen, spawning seeds
to fertilise and form new plants and flowers, sustenance for insects, birds and bats
and on the stem a gleaming red black-spotted bug of beauty walks, ignoring prickles,
nibbling, chewing noxious aphids, safeguarding leaves and petals of the rose,
ensuring blooms in spring, unfolding glassy, fragile wings and taking flight, a fingertip
landing, now crawling on my palm while Gertude sighs above the skies:
A ladybird is a ladybird is a ladybird...
He lives in Bremen, Germany and has been writing (for fun) since the pandemic. His hobbies are too many to mention and his family too strange to describe. He works as a lecturer and, occasionally, as a night porter and loves ice cream.
This story was shortlisted in the May 24 Monthly Micro Competition