The brazen dome of the cicadas’ high-pitched drone claps down tight. All day I have been trapped in relentless sound.

Cicadas cling to every shrub and tree, long lacey wings, and big orange eyes. They fly, hover, mate and start the seventeen-year cycle again. This is the summer of Brood X.

I pull the windows shut, but their sound seeps into the house like a well-deserved reproach. I never thought it would be like this.

A few weeks from now, they will be gone. This time I will outstay them. A dust devil skims across the drive. I watch the sky turn green. We can use a good rain.

Someday, I will recall these details to tell the story of the summer of our divorce. I will begin with a brazen dome.

Miriam N. Kotzin is a founding editor of Per Contra: The International Journal of the Arts, Literature and Ideas, and a contributing editor of Boulevard. She teaches creative writing and literature at Drexel University where she directs the Certificate Program in Writing and Publishing. She writes both fiction and poetry, including collaborative fiction with Bill Turner. Her work has received three nominations for a Pushcart Prize. Her fiction has been published or is forthcoming in more than fifty magazines including Carve, The Pedestal, Slow Trains, Flashquake and Offcourse.