A Mantis Death

    In winter we forget about bugs, which is why I was doubly surprised to see such an exotic insect clinging to the window screen of the living room.
     Pale green and purple, the praying mantis was a larger than I had ever seen before. I thought he was dead until I blew on him and his antennae twitched.
     From then on I called him Lazarus as a sort of joke. He kept alive the next day and the next, all four inches of him clinging to the screen.
      On the third day I studied him closer. He saw me and spun his head, and kept turning it until his motionless eyes stared into mine. He was my endearingly creepy little guy.
       Days later I glanced at him as I had every morning on the way to my car. That day the screen was empty, but the cold concrete was not.
       I scrambled over the potted plants to get to Lazarus. He lay on his back and twitched his legs. One of them stuck out at an angle.
       I snatched him up with both hands and hoped I did not crush his delicate exoskeleton, without which an insect cannot breathe.
      Lazarus kicked in my hands. Small, clasped forearms punched at my finger feebly. I held him close to the screen before he could get more stressed.
      He barely plucked at the black mesh. My heart thudded as I blew hot breath on him. I pushed him onto the netting and let go - he clung there with an outstretched leg as I raced to work.
      He remained unmoved for days. I hoped he would turn his head toward me, but as his stillness gave way to a blackened shriveling of his once beautiful body, I had to face the facts.
      Each time I hoped he lived he had lived, except for that last time when it mattered. I had expected him to rise phoenix-like from death, but sometimes what is hurt too badly cannot come back - sometimes it is just time to let it go.
       I have dreams, too, that I keep nursing back to life. Hope rises, is deferred, and some time later rises again as circumstances change, as life moves. Living things have deaths; however, dreams have many lives.       
        Perhaps my dreams are held for someone else to breathe new life into them. I will not know until my end or theirs. Until then, I have to keep trying and not expect an early spring.