Watching Boys Do Things

The following is an excerpt from Erin Slaughter's A Manual for How to Love Us. Slaughter is the author of two poetry collections: The Sorrow Festival and I Will Tell This Story to the Sun Until You Remember That You Are the Sun. 

It was the summer of ant suicide. That’s how I remember it. The ants showed up everywhere: in the shower drain, working their way into the cap of the shampoo bottle, running chaotic lines from the cracks in the floorboards to the kitchen trash can. Each day in my apartment became another battle against a tiny army that gained ground every time I looked away.

I accidentally left a marshmallow-scented bar of soap on the counter, and the ants ate through it, their motionless bodies dotting the sink’s ledge. They snuck through the vents of the oven and gorged on charred breadcrumbs and ash. I set out traps and they piled into those, too, climbing over their dead, swarming up from the floorboards, ravenous for a brief taste of what would soon cause them to limp away and die.

When I looked close, I noticed all the corpses were split down the belly, foam and shiny black guts spilling out their middles, sprawled as if comatose with pleasure.

I slept, and in the morning: the ants, the ants, the ants. Once, I allowed myself to want in such a split-bellied way.

I’m not going to tell you his name, but let’s say it was a standard American name, like James. That I’d watched my mother burn through a series of gruff, one-syllable men, and told myself it wasn’t the same; that James wasn’t like those men because he

It was the summer of ant suicide. That’s how I remember it. The ants showed up everywhere: in the shower drain, working their way into the cap of the shampoo bottle, running chaotic lines from the cracks in the floorboards to the kitchen trash can. Each day in my apartment became another battle against a tiny army that gained ground every time I looked away.

I accidentally left a marshmallow-scented bar of soap on the counter, and the ants ate through it, their motionless bodies dotting the sink’s ledge. They snuck through the vents of the oven and gorged on charred breadcrumbs and ash. I set out traps and they piled into those, too, climbing over their dead, swarming up from the floorboards, ravenous for a brief taste of what would soon cause them to limp away and die.

When I looked close, I noticed all the corpses were split down the belly, foam and shiny black guts spilling out their middles, sprawled as if comatose with pleasure.

I slept, and in the morning: the ants, the ants, the ants.

Read more: Literary Hub