Summary

The woman says that she now has a collection of the bugs, which she keeps in typewriter-ribbon tins. The carcasses are light and dry, as the interior flesh has decayed. The woman thinks of this deterioration as similar to the soul leaving the body. The woman posits that if people were as familiar with their bones as with their skin, the dead would always be enshrined rather than buried. The skeletons would be posed in their rooms in an attitude of welcome. The bodies of enemy combatants would be displayed in museums in the posture in which they died, still equipped with their weaponry. The woman is sad that because the soft tissue of humans is on the exterior, humans are doomed to “love what perishes” (167). On the bodies of the bugs, two prongs extend from the rear. The woman does not know the...