The Killer of Frogs

By Emily Mills (5/16/06)

(published in Free Verse issue #95)  

How death becomes a tool and not a toy:

            real and terrible, the rock at the bottom of a child’s swollen gut—

1.

Tiny tree frogs are easily caught

catching warm sun on the west-facing bark

they leap long arcs in miniature

so smallish human hands can snatch them

                                    mid-air.

My great-aunt’s stone-built home

presided over acres of lake and forested land

housed snakes and turtles and horses—

a playground of old furniture and terraced gardens

            The great uncle I never met, never knew who

            died before my heart ever beat its unique cadence

            worked on the very first x-ray machines and

            (unsurprisingly) never gave away any offspring.

                        So she alone reigned over the water and stones

                        and we would come hollering and tumbling into her solitude

                        ready to conquer, primed to collect in plastic nets

                        the creatures that nestled in the grass or along the shore.

                                    “I’ll build the frogs a place to live where they can be watched.”

                                    In goes twigs, in goes leaves, in goes a favorite green rock,

                                    the cage complete only lacking a few tiny residents so

                                    here goes the hunt along the garden path, up the slope to

                                                                                                the top.

2.

Eight frogs,

my naively created concentration camp,

and I don’t recall the reason

but when they stopped moving

(at rest? comatose? some sort of froggy protest?)

took them out

on hard stone steps

placed the welcome mat atop

and stomped,

crushed.

3.

One horrified moment of minds trying to comprehend

“What are you doing?” and then “What have you done?”

The great aunt is angry, her wispy white hair all a’flutter,

“Girl, you have done great wrong on my land.”

The garden hose is retrieved

to erase the gory memory

the pancake flat bodies

I was not that kid

            not the killer of things

                        the puller of fly wings

                                    or the ant immolator,

                                                            no.

There was nurtured and natured a deep love of life

of all matter fortunate enough to be imbued therewith

so why this?

Years later the proverbial foot

will come down to crush someone near, someone dear—

            I will remember that I once held such awful power

            and wielded it without mercy

            mindful now

            so anxiously aware

            of every tiny breath.

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