Life span

Every morning a handful of Florida insects buzz themselves awake and willfully decide that today is the day. Today is the day they will commit suicide on the windshield of this here red Mitsubishi Eclipse.

Some wait until she's cruising along at 80 mph, to remove responsibility of death from their shoulders and place it squarely on speed and the laws of physics, of course, thus ensuring themselves a place in, at the very least, insect purgatory. (That was a run-on sentence, kids; don't try it at home.)

Some don't even wait for the engine to purr to life, falling perfunctorily from the sky with a hard-shelled whack. (The black softer-bodied ones prefer the actual bumper.)

I never see them coming, but I hear them flinging themselves at Candii Apple like horny men in a strip club vying for attention before going home to sleeping wives. They sound like angry pebbles. From fleeting impressions and entrails, I've come to believe they're beige.

And after they leave their lower intestines smeared just across my line of sight - because God forbid they aim for the passenger side - I'm left, just a girl inside the goo, the inadvertent insect murderer.

And I know: I will kill again.