A Microdosing, Unemployed Millennial Considers a Termite Colony

by Catriona Wright

like everyone else, I fear
the mother
manipulating their lives

that queen, pale
and pampered
in her chamber, dazzling

pheromones
sterilizing
her competitors

as she creates more
and more workers,
devourers, destroyers

a brood of obedient
collaborators
in her wild delusion

what would it feel like
to surrender
to that swarm

to dream termite dreams
of constructing a self-
cooling cathedral

as grand as
La Sagrada Familia
only with nurseries

instead of naves
our queen,
our queen, ecstatic

with eggs,
each pale jewel
beloved, already

an extension
of our shared mind,
that orgiastic,

delirious structure built
to resist the self’s
insistence