Ever lay around all through the night unable to sleep and feeling restless? Brain moving a thousand miles a minute? Insomnia is a bitch, right? I had just gotten back to Georgia for a funeral, so sleep wasn’t going to come easy. It made me think of all the clichés of people comparing their thoughts to bees because bees sting, and I find this metaphor hilarious.

I played off of it with ladybugs because ladybugs are the worst. They shack up in your home as a small metropolis, and it’s technically illegal to kill them. So yeah, my thoughts aren’t bees. Mine are ladybugs. Here are some of my thoughts from laying around in bed at three o’clock in the morning, unable to sleep:

My brain doesn’t have ideas stinging like bees or wasps. Those insects don’t buzz in the space between my ears at 2:39 AM the night before a funeral where I will watch my loved one be sucked into the earth. My brain has millions of annoying, bright-ass ladybugs zipping around. A multitude of thoughts, none all too harmful or dangerous, but all of them meant to pester me and keep me awake.

Their spotted bodies teasing me as I try to grasp onto sleep. One foul thought is like turning on the living room fan—all the ladybugs tumble and fly and fall from the dome shaped light fixture where they hide in during the day. Ladybugs thoughts gathered, and contrary to popular belief—they aren’t too lucky.

No, when my mind starts and won’t stop, those crimson beetles rustle up anything. Any memory or conspiracy theory or fucked up moment in my life to have me reeling and reminiscing all night from emotional confusion and frustration. To think of it, I’d much rather have bees, ‘cause at least then I’d have something to pollinate my positive thoughts. Instead I have useless bugs the color of stop signs wriggling around my cerebrum—like their cousins the dung beetles—cultivating my shit thoughts and paranoia like pros.