Paper Cells

Thong slipper in hand, I am waiting

for the wasp to stop scaling my window.

Waiting for it to dip & escape the blinds

casting prison stripes across my stance.

The wasp’s trailing abdomen resembles

a semicolon’s leaden half, & flutters

like a bulb’s trembling filament. The insect

flirts with its own reflection like a man

too lovely to be left behind the girth

of steel bars. The pining pest is desperate,

desiring a way out of  the great indoors.

Intruder turned inmate, predator turned

prey. The day my cousin, his eyes light

as clay, pled not guilty, said that the bleak

stabbing was an accident, I thought fear

could make the meekest person lunge

in haste. I thought of the blood as its

own venom, the Black man as phylum

that most frequently wanders into prison.

The two yellow, floral pillows guarding

both ends of my foam futon cannot be

pollinated. I stand clapping my sandal’s

sole against my palm like a watchman’s

baton, unable to take my narrow eyes off

the wasp’s stubborn stinger humping

the sill like a man whose hands are cuffed

& isn’t granted permission for conjugal

visits. My cousin proclaims the day he

was paroled into unlikely circumvention

is the same day his son was conceived,

his pupils swelling to the size of tunnels

in a paper nest, as he swears that his boy

was as calculated as a heist, right before

being detained once again. His fiancée

lugging a wreathed fetus in her stomach,

bobbing & breathing a subtle staccato.

Outside, another wasp raps my pane

in a hysterical hover, its home dangling

over its mandible like a mistletoe tacked

beneath an eave, the comb unreachable

to the detainee struggling to break free

from an invisible penitentiary. How long

will you practice insanity, I ask, as it flits

back & forth in a crazed pace. How long

will your lanky legs crawl in the direction

of a lover you can lay your sights on

but cannot embrace? I watch both parties

press their tarsals into the glass, witness

the imprisoned wasp inch down to dust,

& the other plunge into a budding bush.