encroached

The sugar ants are back. The wall is crawling
that same serrated line, that seethe of black
bodies, rambling, diverging, resolute. Some crumb,
some sticky patch, a crumb of catfood, and
they've come. Again. The sugar ants are back

and there's a roach -- but we don't call it that,
it's a palmetto bug -- a roach by any other name
will perch still, fistbig, on the wall above the shelf,
until it sprints -- it skitters -- worst, it flies --
to shadow. God help me, there's a roach

and fruit flies. All the fruit lives in the fridge,
and we have flies. They dance around the dish
of soap and vinegar. They razz their little wings,
they shrill, they whine their tiny little whines.
I pray for spiders, pray for lizards. I have flies

and omens lurking in the bathrooms. Shadows
that ring drains and faucets. I scrub them
once a week, with bleach, and then the shadows
gray, vague, drift relentless millimeters back.
Their armies seep through every drip and crack.

Our walls are permeable, our floors, traversed,
our seals unsealed and tender to the world.
Next week we could be split and opened wide
to the great, the wet, the crawling, wild,
exultant world. We will be Eden.