It Rained Last Night
It rained last night.
I know because there’s an earthworm stretched out across a crack of dirt.
It’s being swarmed by a colony of ants.
Its tail end ripped open (do earthworms have tails,
or are they all body, like stories?),
its pink, throbbing inside meets the unfeeling air outside.
It thrashes. The ants engulf it.
I consider leaving it. Or crushing it.
I live with the most talkative woman I have ever met.
I love her. I hate her.
She has perfected the art of interrupting me.
At just the right moment, when I am in the middle of a thought incomplete,
it is as if I am beheaded (or betailed) by the sentence headsman’s scythe.
The man I used to pretend to love wrote me this week. He wants to meet up.
I wrote him back right away.
“Don’t think it’s a good idea right now.
Have a good move back to Switzerland.”
I thought about pretending again and felt ill.
I thought about crushing him.
Too bloody. Too pink.
I didn’t hit send.
There are some people I prefer not to call friends anymore.
I let the ants crawl over our relationship instead of dropping a rock on it.
It seems like I had less to do with it that way.
It thrashes and takes a long time to die.
It…
