Insectopia

It’s a country one only hears about when there’s a military coup or a 7.2 magnitude earthquake, or when the bird flu crosses the species barrier to humans, but it’s where, after the clock wound down, I ate a picnic lunch beside the grave of the patron saint of outcasts and rebels, and later, wearing a knockoff of Kafka’s barbed-wire halo, I climbed the steps carved into a hill to visit a holy spot once reserved for virgin sacrifice and now a gathering place for toothless old women in babushkas who believe it’s bad luck to ever kill a ladybug.