The mother in summer wears shades
as if to say she has done this before,
Wears her human skin and paints her toenails
as if to say she goes here and in another life,
she might be fun, or something like it.
They go to the park, the pool, and it’s a little indecent,
she thinks privately, all this flesh,
but it’s nothing that wasn’t there before – just the crowd
in different phases of exposure.

She has heard that some feel this way in winter,
disappearing into darkness as she comes alive,
different broods of cicadas occasionally overlapping, 
vibrating and screaming in turn.