Formic Acid

Surely they have multiplied.

From I-can’t-keep-leftover-dosa-open-on-a-plate
to Lock & Lock containers with leakproof lids
in my more frequent Nesto carts and our greige walls
splintering up like attic mirrors. You notice them first
in your house; diligently name them
by color, size, eyemuzzlelegs. I note the sting;
how each needles in, how each percolates connective tissue,
how each stays unrequited
in a pool of feigned ignorance,
a willful disregard to understanding.
Mealy-mouthed, we never draw up words
from the cabbage rings of our wells. We swim like frogs,
skin-breathing, veiling the truth that we are neither frogs,
nor do we possess ranine brooding or well-dwelling habits.

A connection is also a way to rupture. I am trying to erase
the line by widening it so much so that we become as definite
as what connects us.

I put up my ways of resistance: buy dozens of tangerines,
churn vats of lime, wipe countertops clean with powdered
anthills of citrous peels. You linger. I am forced to hand-pick
cloves out of rice, sweep ground chalk from my windowsill
after every morning coffee-and-call. You greet good morning.
I concoct remedies powdering sugar, pouring
half a pack of baking soda. I google: another use
for crusted borax stashed by emptied detergent cans,
abandoned peanut butter jars.

I know you must have waged your own war: spritzed vinegar,
sprinkled talcum powder, planted ant-baits. You retain
your frog traits of silence.

I pluck dead ants peppered on my fridge door casket.
My thoughts tweezer them off from the sleep-bundled bedsheet,
from laundered shirts, terry bars, moon-rim of the water pot,
from sealed-yet-infested almond packets.

You drill holes along your wall skirting, seal ant-gel in place.
Late in the evening, we sweep laterite dust
from your tiles when the workers leave. We linger
here: having to wiremesh-scrub with the raw, primordial
earnestness and enterprise to make something that exists,
something that breathes and lives
vanish. You bring in painters.

You know about their vespoid wasp ancestors. I know
that they survived mass extinctions. We keep
quiet like summer-frogs.