The Silence of the Cicadas

Some signs that summer is over creep - bulky sweaters in designer showroom windows, hot canned coffee at the small grocery store, fat steamed pork buns by the Lawson's register.
Others fling themselves buzzing into your screen doors. The cicadas - semi - drone a high-decibel sonic backdrop all summer. They're loud like a buzzing neon light. Like a whole roadside of neon zapping with pulsating current.
They're all supposed to live only a week or so, and their squished carcases have been getting ground into the sidewalks for weeks. But it was only in the last few days that they started skittering onto our eighth floor balcony, so big and heavy and clattery that they seem more like spring-loaded tin wind-up toys than insects. They thud when they hit the glass and rattle as they lie on the floor, buzzing in short, desperate bursts instead of in their usual long, rhythmic whirs.
We just left them out there the other night, one on each balcony. In the morning, both were gone.