Except they aren't insects; they're our relatives!

I did a bellyflop into the pool. I created a splash, but not the splash anticipated while climbing the high dive, giggling to myself, eyeing the spectators below laying out on their towels on lounge chairs, line shirts open, straw hats and shades and lotioned noses. My powerful cannonball? How did you fail me? How did the elements of wind, of inner fears, of self-professed contortions catch me, unfold me and flay me against the water in such a horrid way?

My stomach was red for days. Yes. Communist. It and comrade internal neighboring organs rallying against me, tired of my poor decisions. The mind would no longer control from the frontal lobe. Nutrients were rerouted away, cut off going north of the neck and held in reserves by the kidneys. The mouth–once the wooer itself–was wooed to the stomach's cause and would now feed for the GI tract with no input from head or heart. It was both ingestor, investor and spokesman for the southern cause. I admit, I didn't even realize till too late.

My tough, tough exoskeleton would soon be swayed into serving against my holistic wellbeing, as well. Its amazing what the need for feed and fuel can do to loyalty. Of all parts of my body, it never dawned on me that the exoskeleton–my tough exterior to the world I refused to please–would in fact fall in line with the gluttony and immediacy of the stomach's creed, churned out in backyard presses and stuffed in pockets from students to embarrassed professions the whole rebellion over.

Work songs: stomach gurggles to me, but rallying cries inside.

Marches: all along the GI tract.

My thoracic cavity and innards afeared dissent spreading through the veins–the very veins of health and commerce now of attrition! My thorax was all a' mess.

Thorax? Exoskeleton? A bug? Yes. A metaphor? No. I am a bug. I am a bug that belongs to a community pool (and racket club, in fact). The irony, if I know anything about my human readership, is that while laying out in the sun in our own half-open linen shirts, sandals by our side, lotions rubbed in and draw strings tight on our waists, we too slap at bugs that buzz around us. Except they aren't insects; they're our relatives!

Oh!