Ant
Slowly, with lithe movement, you crawl along the shadows of the sidewalk,
each limber leg making its way through the patches of sun and fallen leaves,
winding your way aimlessly, like a lunatic.
You are looking for a meal, I suppose. A midday snack, a spider’s carcass, a long-dead brother, or
a rotting piece of fruit that someone left behind.
The sun glints over your waxy thorax, and as you get on your hind legs, I watch you.
You are busy and you are beautiful.
I am not unlike you, Ant. I too, spend this life alone, wandering about the plane
of the bus stop, stopping often to inspect the lamp post. You are,
as I am, a solitary being.
The sun beats fiercely on us, glaring in the sky, its heat bearing a message
I can't begin to understand.
If you know, my friend, please tell me. Tell me how to handle desolation.
Teach me how to bear it, when the wind howls,
and it sweeps me away to the utopia in my mind, where I am not alone, but in his arms.
The crummy pack of cigarettes you now crawl over, the empty beer can
littered by my foot, they are perfect metaphors for my soul. But not for his. He is clean,
and he is so different than the man I came from. I want to have him, Ant.
I want him in a dark motel, every night for eternity. Turning me over
like an ardent wind does a leaf.
But it is a forbidden desire that I will never meet. Your tiny body now clambers on my hand,
scaling the ridges of my palm, frantically searching for a way off.
He will never want me, Ant.
Just as my father, with his disheveled beard and swollen gut, does not want me.
Your antennae tickles my knuckles, and you crawl faster.
I am alone, Ant. But just the same, I must do this.
I cannot have you telepathically telling your queen my secret.
Thank you for listening, I think, as I crush your frail body
inside my fist.