Spring 2007 Issue

"The Problem of Ants" by Dayna Stein

I’ve been watching ants

die on my windowsill

for weeks now. Black,

boneless bodies rowing

their way to the afterlife.

It was raining, so I hid

in the warm folds of your coat.

Yet, my mind kept returning.

Your eyelashes were so frail.

I couldn’t disturb them—

piling up into

a battlefield

the day after. My little

ant graveyard where

not all the corpses were dead

yet.

Darkness crawled in through

a cracked window and slowly

began to carry away the meat

of your arms. My hands groped

for the missing pieces, but grasped

only bed sheets.

How short are the lives

of ants! Barely born before

I watch their last dance

and wonder at the sound

of their last breath. This

must be how gods feel.

Some sounds are worse

than Monday morning alarm

clocks. They are: The shriek

of jagged lines straightening,

the screams of a thousand dying ants.

Death is a moment that

cannot be ignored. Ant-death

is no different. The ants wave

with spindly legs and I can’t help

but question if their goodbyes

are painful. Sometimes

I wave back.

I wake at night

trying to brush

the corpses of ants

off my tongue.

This time I take a tissue

and begin an archeological dig,

expose windowsill—

It’s startling like bone.

Dumping the bodies,

I walk away without

glancing back.

The ants have stopped screaming.