Lihong
Mass suicide of ants in my water glass
Every morning
I take a deep gulp of water
From the glass by my bedside table
After the night's drought
My throat is like sandpaper
One day I flick on the lamp
And spy a cluster of periods
punctuating the surface of the water
Probably dust
Or so I thought
Until I realised one of them was moving
It had six legs
These things always happen to me
Like that time a fly flew into my mouth
While I was mouth breathing on a run
Or the time when I found half a worm
In my overpriced salad (I hope I didn't eat the other half)
From then on
I check my glass of water every day
There's always an ant or two
And I wonder
What is it that makes them
Commit mass suicide?
Note:
wrote this when doing The Body Series workshop (June 2020), reading The Omnivore's Dilemma and a few months after the height of the Amazonian forest fires, the Australian bushfires, in the middle of the Covid-19 pandemic, and generally feeling that everything happening was absurd and at the same time, made complete sense.