too often

As he stood at the toilet he gripped his pants with a surgeons hand, steady and slow yet firm. He slowly tugged at the brass button of his chinos. The painting over the toilet was of a house, emerald and lethargic in his memories as he turned his head to the left wall. There he saw a mosquito hawk, splayed out with a certain savage beauty flapping its wings hysterically. Yet the thing didn’t fly away, the iridescent wings gave off a sirens hum, sweet to the ear. Time stopping if anything, the sound flowed to his ears to sooth his troubled mind. His right hand still gripped the brass button; there was no zipper on his chinos, merely four-brass button in a straight line. He contemplated the buttons; the blasé painting, the insect thriving on the eggshell wall to his left. Perhaps the humble crane fly was offering a challenge to him. It seemed that way at times, why not an insect if anything? Perhaps this insect was sent to challenge his worldly life or perhaps it was the spirit of a dead relative. He listened for the insect once more, but instead heard the rhythm of his own breathing. He decided what he had to do, and this was not that. So he left.