Lizzy Burnam 🐞

In college I dated a carpenter ant. 
When we first met, we recognized each other 
immediately, like two thieves, 
by the smell of sawdust on our hands. 
He said he had a soft spot 
for the dead look in my eyes
and the way I always acted bent 
out of shape and place,
like a fat hunk of driftwood on a pebble beach. 
I considered falling in love with him 
but decided against it. 
Our dates were short, sterile, and systematic. 
Like clockwork, he would crawl inside 
my dorm up through a crack 
in the floorboards to tunnel through my body 
with his sharp mandible.
Afterward, he’d thread the holes 
with the vines of a willow tree. 
"History favors the bold," he liked to say.
"The foundation of excellence lies in self-control." 
He had a French name meaning 
"assault on the king" or something like that. 
I always read it as stigmata,  
like one of his great-greats did something so foul
it reverberated through the family name 
for seven generations, 
but I think he secretly suspected 
he descended from royalty—the kind of royalty
that takes the throne 
not by birth, but by force. 
His style of stroking turned me 
straight to honeydew, 
the voids he left glowing sweetly green 
as he sucked the breath out of me 
and regurgitated it back into my mouth. 
"To your health," he'd say, 
and I'd fall asleep to the clicking of his antennae. 
He bragged of having mated
with countless queens before me 
but I think they would’ve killed him? 
I won’t pretend to know much 
about the reproductive rituals of ants. 
Just wasn’t built for the colonial life, myself. 
We went off and on for a while until 
he left me for a monarch butterfly. 
I don't blame him. 
She was an emblem 
of joy, lively 
beyond question, fervid 
as a wildfire. 
Anyway, he texted me recently to say 
he was sorry for being cruel. 
I decided to love him then. 
Didn’t we both escape from that same tower of dirt?
It took me years to learn 
how the soft-bodied keep their little bellies fed. 
And the more I think of it, 
the more it strikes me sensible 
that the most sensitive creatures 
in this rough-hewn world
have the hardest exterior shells.