Ladybug.

We joked about whether I’d like you

if you were a bug.

Of course.

Absent all my usual hesitance,

I knew the bug you’d be.

By name alone.

The kind no one minds,

whose apparition, from the moment you land,

wings folding neatly beneath lacquered elytra,

is meant to be good luck.

Save for the occasion

you choose to nibble

on whatever tenderness you can find,

sowing small chaos

in the garden of my heart.

Climbing across the buttressed and scaffolded foliage

I have painstakingly grown.

I wonder why I’m ever surprised by your appearance,

Ladybug,

since the peonies were an invitation

for you to flit into my life

and trace a path across the yarrow

even thought it means you’ll leave holes in my heart

like little bites on bracts

so at dawn’s break the sunlight scatters

like it must through the practice target

of the most incapable shot at a gun range.

But my heartache over this mess subsides

because as soon as you show up,

everyone coos so loudly.

And yet again, I hear the refrain,

“Oh! It’s good luck!”

“Good luck to me,” I whisper under my breath

for the blessed curse

of loving a bug.