The praying mantis lives in a small but well-furnished and moderately priced studio apartment in an oak tree overlooking a baseball field in the park where, on warm spring days, she hears the crack of a bat and the faraway roar of a crowd she doesn't pay attention to. On weekends, she likes to stay in and read, or catch up on the latest news with a friend. Her friendships don't last very long, so the news she gets from them is always fresh, and she never has to concern herself with keeping the names and situations of their lives straight in her mind.

Lately, the mantis has felt restless, the thrill of stalking and consuming her prey—whether it be a moon-addled moth, a frisky horsefly, or a crisp ladybug—no longer as exciting as it once was. The mantis is not used to this, as she has always been driven by her desires, from the moment she wakes up till the moment she folds herself up into a green pagoda to sleep at night. But tending to these wants has grown tiring. She wonders if inside her there is only a series of jaws, daisy-chained into a flat loop of unceasing hunger. She finds herself second-guessing her decisions, listlessly contemplating her desires and finding them uncompelling. Her increasing inability to derive enjoyment from things was something she had been working on with her therapist, a millipede with a tendency to run late, until she got fed up with his tardiness and ate him. He had been juicy yet surprisingly tough, and he had tasted like dark soil, a slightly bitter flavor she dreamt about for days afterward.

Sometimes the mantis goes on dates. She's never disappointed by the males she meets, because she never expects much from them. The sex is usually fine—adequate at best and unremarkable at worst. She enjoys the click she feels when they mount and socket themselves into her, as well as the crackling sound their heads make when she pincers her mouth around them. The males seem grateful to die while inside her, their jerking bodies moving even more frantically once she's killed them. She remembers most of these assignations, if not the males themselves, fondly.

When the mantis falls in love for the first time, it is with a male almost half her size, the same subtle green as her—a shade darker than the leaves of the oak tree. He approaches her boldly, unlike the others, who all creep up to her with the same air of mingled shame and excitement, and she is surprised by how much she likes this boldness. One of his front legs is slightly shorter than the other, and he walks with a graceful, tripping gait that she admires.

He invites her to a bar in his neighborhood and she accepts, taking care with her appearance. They discuss themselves and the things they enjoy: the sound of birds in the morning, the tremble of the leaves in a storm, the taste of dew.

"It's too bad that all of this will end with you eating me," he says at the end of their date, when he's walking her back to her place. "I've enjoyed getting to know you."

"We don't have to do that yet," she finds herself saying. "We can continue getting to know each other."

"I don't take it at all personally," he says, almost apologetically. "I know how it goes." And he closes his eyes, in case she changes her mind and decides to end things then and there.

The mantis considers her options. Her hips swivel, ready to accommodate him, while her jaws ache to snap around his neck, to crush his eyes and pick at his flesh. But she remembers something the millipede said to her, a session or two before she ate him, about how wanting did not always have to equal having. If all you ever do is go after the things you want, you'll never know what it is you need, he'd said, and she'd wondered if she should just eat him up right then and there for saying something so stupid.

But it is late and she is feeling generous, and as the rosy August moon strawberries into the sky, she kisses him good night—she notices the twang of fear in his body when he feels the whisper of her jaws along his face—and goes inside her apartment and shuts the door, leaving him outside, and alive. She sleeps easy that night for the first time in weeks, and in the morning she catches a fat mayfly, relishing the crunch of its wings, but decides to eat only half of it, saving the rest for later. Perhaps not everything has to be consumed right away in order to be enjoyed, she thinks, proud of herself.

A few days later, his body turns up below the oak tree. Someone else has made short work of his head and thorax, and she knows that it is him by the length of one of the front legs, curled underneath the limp body. She feels an alien regret pool inside of her, fresh as rainwater, watching as a group of human children gather around the body to poke at it with a stick. She will never get to ask him his thoughts on the sound of ducks in the spring now, or about the leaping of crickets in late summer. She will never see the look of fear and awe in his acid green eyes when she twists her head to stare into them mid-coitus. And she will never know if she would have stopped herself, kept her jaws closed, after he had been inside her; if she would have known how to enjoy his company, without making him forever and irrevocably hers.

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