I stepped out of my room on the hill and walked down to the campus which stretched out below me like a tiny city turned ghost town at five PM on a Sunday. It was overcast and gloomy and to the West a bank of storm clouds rolled over the setting sunlight and gave not even a glancing nod to the world below. The wind was oddly still and heat radiated from the fading black asphalt until beads of sweat popped out on my face which I wiped on my shirt sleeve. On lonely days or nights I take the slow route. Sidewalk to sidewalk connecting and winding the long way around. Today it felt foolish to skip the paths and walk across the beaten grass patches where student after student, myself included when in a hurry, shortcut the stone and brick to get to their destination a few seconds quicker.

Half way to the library I saw it. A cicada lying almost alone there on the concrete. At first I thought it was in the twilight time, twitching and roaming the ground in the last few hours of its existence. Upon closer inspection I realized the creature was already dead and the only movement was that of a team of ants charging in and out and removing the remains a piece at a time. Instantly the words flashed into my head from the fictional character Ricky Fitts in American Beauty. "Because it's beautiful." But what was beautiful about the creature dead there? I didn't know, but none the less, I repeated the words over and over several times.

I continued on to the library and quickly hid myself upstairs on the fourth floor near a window in the back. Outside the dark clouds rolled in and pushed the fluffy white clouds out of view. I sat there reading for two hours and occasionally taking a break to sit and stare out at the world around the window. On The Road had just thirty pages to go but I feared finishing it. The book was like a friendship which I didn't wish to end just yet. The clouds and the weather and the world just roll and turn and change and I move with them even when I try not to. Still more words were there in my head. Another line began to make a lot of sense when looking out at everything around me. "Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in."

So I packed up my books and I headed on back the way I came. Back across the brick and down to the forgotten dead cicada. Now more ants had come. Hundreds more covered the body with their own until it was dark with them. I had forgotten the creature just once, but not again. The second sighting had even more of an impact on me. I continued on past it and made my way up the hill. The wind was picking up and rain began to splatter on the lenses of my glasses. The Western clouds were no longer in the distance but I still had so many questions. Nothing seemed to make any more sense than before, but the world around me seemed a bit more beautiful. Even in death. No matter what questions I have and how I feel inside, I can't deny that there is just so much beauty in the world.