Not to Die Alone

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As I climbed into my bed the other night,
I found in the sheets a wasp at the end of its life.

The insect seemed to me confused,
desperate for answers as to why it’s body had begun to fail after so many days of reliability,
once-powerful wings, no longer capable of flight,
legs twitching at times without being asked to do so,
senses dulling with every minute,
no word from the hive.

How I wished I could have held the tiny creature in my arms,
and been held just the same,
to have consoled one another in this, the autumn of our days,
as fellow lifeforms,
bereft the distance born the posturing and egos of our time amongst our respective peoples.

How often had we both felt,
in our beating hearts and throbbing forms,
a yearning to be loved, truly loved, by those with whom we shared our short lives,
for just one moment even, to pause the building of paper barriers and intricate networks,
and just marvel in sweet embrace at the mystery of our ephemerality and the fortune of the opportunity to experience such wonders together?

As I gently carried the increasingly docile body, crawling ineffectively on my palm, to the windowsill,
mindful that our brief encounter could very well be the only touch of affection received either of us before we closed our eyes for the last time,
perhaps the only true intimacy felt in the entirety of our existence,
I was overcome with the moment,
and I wept with a shared sense of unbridled joy and a deep, profound loss for something I couldn’t quite comprehend and still find myself unable to grasp.