A swarm of hornets can cause hundreds of stings

& in comparison everything seems small now but 

I remember gasping when I witnessed

a wasp nest fall from the sky, damaging & denting

a paper husk, & my father I remember shouted run,

& any scars from that moment have been surgically &

forcibly removed. My skin is clear in the midnight moon

so brightly casting shadows in the streets, I can see the sky

from here. I usually don’t look up & here I am imprisoned

by a thousand tiny stars, marking the distance to civilization,

tenement lights at the edge of a long dark river, I scream,

& it echoes. Someone screams back, a shriek piercing,

a shriek exploding across the bay, shriek that whimpers

when alone, shriek that has nobody to speak to. I do

not listen & move on. & I’ve watched each 

of my friends left here fall into addiction & drudgery, 

shooting up in bathroom stalls, bragging about it later,

morphine isn’t as good as fucking, though, & every lawn

is mowed tight to the ground, & there is a sterile air

hanging above us, poached & parched by meth labs,

propped up by a scarecrow, land outstretched

for miles.

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