It is a Saturday and I have noticed that you are not laughing, that your skin is not cratered by stings, that you have slipped out the window.
An ineffectual fan heaves hot air and it is raining. A single hornet can kill two honey bees in one minute. Why would you be gentle when sweetness is at stake?
Outside, the dogs whistle into the same night, acknowledge the stars even long dead; their light now an echo.
You and your bags in the distance, soft in the thick air, looking just an inch of yourself. The leak had started above the central bulb
and the fizzing, the whole electrics of it suddenly a forceful weather its own. The glass slicked and threatening to burst.
You and your hand bloody from the work tell me that back home the bed is not infested and rip the wood from under me, see it’s all
crawling down there on so many legs. A little sadness under a cracked ceiling is what damp empty rooms are for:
mothball tears and whole bottles to boat in. I turn the couch clockwise and find a scout trapped where there is no nectar but dust.
A great sparrow can find a tree to nest in and I can clasp my hand around the too bigness of a yellow headed hornet, take the honey to the thief.
To live for nothing but syrup; for the high, for the full veined venom of it. To drink until it’s all over and the room is filled with laughter.
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Eva Griffin is a poet living in Dublin and a founding member of Not4U Collective. Her debut pamphlet ‘Fake Hands / Real Flowers’ is published by Broken Sleep Books. She is the poetry editor for Queen Mob's Teahouse.
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