I doomed a wasp,
closed her up
in between two
window panes.
She is trapped
but doesn’t know it.
No one noticed
my mother’s silence
until she broke it.
I think about
her heaving body
the condition it is
now—ash.
My mother is
ash on a shelf and
I’m still breathing,
in a chair in
Memphis, Tennessee,
watching a wasp
with elegant
wings, perfect for flight
spindle legs
her twitching
antennae and I wish
I could die too
and I know
that I can.
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