An Ode: Yoko Ono’s Fly

The woman is naked, spread eagled on a white sheet. Her chest rises (falls) rises (falls), and the window is open. Do you feel vulnerable yet? No? Listen closer.

There is a buzz. No, not a buzz, a squeal. A wail, a hum, a moan. The indistinct sounds of Yoko Ono’s voice falters up and down in a furious conversation with itself. Enter the housefly. He settles on the woman’s hip, patting his feelers against her skin, a gentle tap-tapping that I swear I can hear against the high-pitched noise. The boy in front of me at the movie theatre jerks his hand. The woman on screen does not move.

The fly scurries lower. Her belly. Her outer thigh. Her inner thigh. The nest of her pubic hair. Monus pubis. Labia majora. Labia minora. You cannot see the fly anymore. Is it inside of her? 

No, wait, there he is. Can you feel him on your nipple? His small feet itch against her skin, a gentle touch that does not pierce. 

Don’t move.

The fly is on her face now, just above her eyes, where in her dark lashes tiny little demodex spiders burrow in the follicles. Each night, when she goes to sleep (Listen! This happens to you too), the microscopic arthropods make their many legs known, crawling quickly across your skin to find an empty pore to lay its eggs in. The fly shouldn’t bother you at all then, should he? Don’t blink. 

A second of silence. And then...wait, the fly is on her collar bone, pausing. I imagine that he is lapping up the tiny pool of sweat that gathers in her every crevice. He moves down her torso.

(Did you know that your belly-button is filled with hundreds of anaerobic bacteria at all times? Right now, for example, they’re scurrying inside of it. When’s the last time you washed your naval out? Really washed it? Think about it. The fly moves lower. Itch-itch. Don’t move.)

The film zoom’s out, the soundtrack seems louder. The boy in front of me cannot stop twitching. Don’t make a fist. Don’t shut your eyes. Don’t think about nails against skin. Do not consider the whispering bugs in your armpits, your groin, in the frail skin underneath your eyes, gathered at the puckered corners of your mouth. Do not think about that time in seventh grade you got lice, do not remember the feeling of nits in your ponytail, the rice-sized creatures crawling in and out of your fringe. Do not concentrate on mosquitos, spider bites, sitting on an ant-hill, do not think about wriggling parasites in your gut, white worms in your colon, dry skin that looks like a moths wings, a gnat tickling the inside of your ear. Do not think about the barefoot sensation of stepping on a slug, the itch of a caterpillar, the burrowing of a centipede. Do not think about all these things at once making themselves at home on your body. Breathe. Do not move.

How many flies are on the screen now? I’ve lost count. They are moving, moving, moving all over her. She breathes into the muggy air (I imagine it’s muggy, houseflies love the damp). Her chest rises (falls) rises (falls), and the window is open. Do you feel vulnerable yet? No? Listen closer.

Yoko is still singing.