ants

Tonight, you cannot sleep because,

a thousand red insects clamber out of your ear canals,

arthropod legs thundering, marching out of sync, and through

the spaces between fingernail and skin where

I have clawed out openings for their tiny bodies to breathe

they scutter over your bones in hungry black clusters, they can

smell the organs you hide rotting inside,

the neighbors downstairs scream / be quiet

but the ants you do not control.