Trail of the Ants
My sixteen-year-old son left a partially eaten sandwich in a paper bag behind the driver's seat of his car. Then he went to camp. For a week, the sandwich lived there, inside its paper hideout, but eventually— I don't know how long these things take —a horde of ants discovered it and decided this unguarded bag would be the best, the most beneficent and democratic land of opportunity. And so, in the light of the moon, they commenced a proper invasion, traveling through dew and the mist of early morning, into the quiet confidential backseat— into the unsuspecting bag, taking without resistance the feast left so magnanimously by an unknown noble and generous spirit, my son. Alas, the stronghold was not to last. And really, would it be surprising, almost the way your so-called love came crawling into me, eating every offering I could muster up until there was nothing left in the wrinkled, emptied paper bag that was my heart.
