Pinnacle Trap
How did a simple house authorize suffocation?
I pass the same house every day. I thought I knew its shape until I saw what was hidden beneath the surface and how quickly a place of refuge can become something else entirely. This came from a knot in my throat I couldn't walk off.
The daily walk, a routine treadmill.
Simple house, predictable geometry.
But the bats find it.
They seek the hollow kindness of its peak.
A safe crevice, a necessary darkness for warmth.
They locate the fissure, the way in.
The eaves become a living, breathing dome.
Every passage, a soundtrack:
Fluttering parchment, needle-thin squeaks.
A colony threading life above the porch light.
Then, a sudden change in the frame.
The house, simple no longer.
A barricade of spite.
Sealant, mesh—a calculated obstruction—
welding the crack shut.
My throat tightens with their imprisoned terror.
The inability to hunt, to breathe the outside air.
Starvation coded into cement.
The young, trapped in the attic’s airless silence.
Still, the frantic parchment flutter.
The needle-thin squeaks, fading.
Until one day: nothing.
The air above the eaves is flat, dead.
I know the meaning of that absence.
How did a simple house authorize suffocation?
A colony seeking life, trying to feed its young.
All to avoid a humane displacement.
We blink and turn away, call it a small matter.
It’s just about bats, they hiss.
But the rage, the horror—
if the seal were on my peak, on my family’s window.
Is it just a bat then?
Where is the true, visceral difference?
The moral membrane, torn.
With grit and grace, Brandi Lynn ♡
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I'm Brandi Lynn. Author, artist, and literacy educator. Welcome to this quiet sanctuary for the outliers, pattern-seekers, and sensory-overloaded. If these words or images found a home in you, I'd love for you to stay.
For more grit, grace, and visual art find me on Instagram — Sent2MeDesigns (Art) and ByBrandiLynn (Poetry) or at my website ByBrandiLynn.com
This hit harder than I thought it would when I read it . I felt the panic, the fear.. wow 🧡
Impressive writing, dear Brandi. Confronting nature and the oppressive forces of human presence, the suffocation is deeply felt. The "moral membrane, torn" will stay with me.