I’ve taken this country to court and I’m not sorry. I’m knee-deep in the shells of cicadas, you see, so I’ve already learned that growth means pain. The judge bangs her gavel. I flinch and the defendant’s lawyer catches it. What do you believe in, that’s larger than yourself? he asks, maniacally, looking through a monocle like the devil does in my dreams, or like one of those cartoon villains on Nickelodeon, take your pick. I tell him that I believe in how snails slime slowly. There’s an objection on relevance, but the judge overrules it and allows me to describe the feeling of being twelve and listening to my parents talk about how they don’t love each other anymore, mouth too sticky and too sweet from Klondike bars and lemonade that I physically can’t make myself cry. There’s a certain art to not saying anything, I say. The judge is bored and not listening. I explain how hurt I was when my best friend didn’t text me on Father’s Day because she didn’t want to remind me that my father is dead. I explain the nostalgia of fireflies, the ache to see their dark bodies against dark sky, to make sense of their patterns, but really so that I can catch them. We try so hard to not hurt each other, we end up hurting each other worse. The stock market goes up and then sideways, babies croak for formula, and my third-grade teacher lives in a tent on the side of a highway. Isn’t this all strange? I can’t pay rent and there’s a loaf of bread in my fridge, molding, which is just a type of motion if you think about it, like germs and lichen, organisms and galaxies, the texture of willow bark, leaves in the wind, the meaning of country. As if I could forget any of our history, like it’s not etched into the rings of my bones. If you kill me, I will multiply, I threaten. My lawyer looks alarmed and shakes her head. It’s ok because no one else is listening & then the courtroom turns into a caricature—2D, hyper realistic, with bright orange and green hues. Maybe none of this is real, is a lie I want to believe. We all want to believe lies. The judge is an octopus with eight gavels. I try to speak but bees come out of my mouth; I’m now a monster. There’s an objection on relevance, and it’s sustained because bees are legally inadmissible. I vow to keep saying nothing until one day I don’t.