In memory of ants,
The undersides of stones,
and Martian walks through your home town. 

i was beamed down and subjected to the 
ridicule of the cicadas across the Main Street
where i learned that there is a safe
space
between the double yellow lines on Main Street
where you can't hear anything but the 
stream's blood--
-- thin yourself
into the delicate rind the of new moon that plops in the sky
like a toe nail. the invisible notion
of the last piece of raspberry cheesecake
on thawed on my uncle's counter--
simmer my skin to sugar jars--

i wish i still noticed the lighting bugs
before they dimmed themselves into jack-o-lanterns--
there was a time when so much of my life revolved around
lightning bugs and pouring sugar on the front porch to
watch how many ants it took to consume it.
i let them crawl on my legs like guests to
the sprouting forest of my hair before
i knew that people cut down the rain forest
in acres and that people cut ants in half 
with their flipflop heels and that 
people cut leg hairs in stinging orange peels.

i fed the bugs french fries and ketchup to
watch the movement of their mandibles--
the clacking castanets of the queen beneath 
the blemished earth-- my martian earth
face hides the ants of my childhood 
under my skin-- they stir when i walk along
the creek again.
only the plants reject me-- a virus--
an alien affliction-- the blood
of the stream mistakes me for Ebola
or bird flu-- and sends the mosquitoes.

i feel the gravity different now and my hands
like smaller than the locals
everyone here looks at me through
the mouths of cicadas-- my hands are more like
mandibles than five-fingers. 

i fear the ants here.

the queen told them all i'm made of sugar cubes--
the time away has turn my blood to nectar--
a buffet for the mosquito straws--i am reverted to
the kiwi-strawberry
Capri-Sun fermented from fifth grade
hidden like an orphaned sock beneath 
the kitchen cabinet.

waist deep in the stream i remember
i was supposed to catch a lightning bug this
year and put it in a jar when i took the
flight home-- because home is wherever 
the ants find me know-- they still stir for
me in between the double yellow
lines on Main Street. 

waist deep in the stream i check
the under sides of the stones for
pieces of my long brown hair,
elbow scabs, and threads from the gnarled
thigh-seams of my jeans
leftovers from a life centered 
around lightning bugs
and bags of sugar
my father kept in the glove box of
his jeep--
sugar unthawing on my uncle's counter.

i always forget something 
underneath a stone in the creek
-- a cray fish--
a light bulb-- a photograph
of me eating spearmint leave
like the girl i never was--
and i never find it again-- the stream
doesn't recognize me enough. it says
that i am no longer queen--
i don't smell like chlorine
and i'm tight like the seam
of a jar of fireflies
beneath a stone. 

but the Main Street knows. it knows that
my skin is sugar and my brown
hair is somewhere-- woven 
like a welcome mat on my legs--
it keeps the cray fish and the photographs
and the light bulb
so that i always have to come back
even when i no longer fit between
the double yellow lines
on Main Street.