The Ant

 

The ant doesn’t know.

Does the ant know?

The ant exists – instinct.

It is borne breathing, living surviving – work for the colony, find food to feed the young, feed the young until the young can find food to feed themselves, to feed the young, tend to the queen, tend to the eggs.

 

What does the ant know of people?

That we are born breathing, living and lost –

Or are we just landscape, moving as the trees do, the leaves do.

 

What does the ant know of breathing, living, surviving – what does it know of a life without purpose?

The ant walks across a person’s palm and does not think, does not know, does not understand.

And then it does –

 

Knows this land is a hand, a hand of a person, a person with thoughts, a person who thinks

(thinks?)

and hopes, and dreams and longs and aches for all the things they never had or had but never valued, a person who regrets not taking that chance to travel, not saying “I love you” to that one person

(love?)

and the ant knows of travel now, knows of distances it would do so many times over travelling, and what does it mean to live a life maybe twenty times longer

(what is life?)

to regret that time spent and it knows of what it means to be so big but still feel like an ant – auto cannibalistic misery – that spits in the face of a base desire to survive

(What is suicide? what is regret? What is purpose? What is time? What are planes? What is air? What are particles? What are atoms? What is – ohgodwhatisgodandwhydoeseveryththingfeellikesomuchwhydoeseverythinghurtsomuchwhatiseverythingwheredoesitallstopwhatishurtwhydoesithurtmakeitstop

whydoesithurt

whatishurt

makeitstop

please make it stop.


And it stops.

The ant no longer understands. But it can’t unknow.

Unknow the things it no longer has words for.

Longs for, wants for.

A brain that wants to understand but was not built to want or understand.

It knows pain though.

And it hurts.

 

What does the ant do?

There is no pheromone to indicate the things the ant know does-doesn’t know.

A brain that can’t conceptualise its own destruction tearing itself in two.

Information that the ant can no longer categorise, unholdable in its brain.

Does the ant forget? Can the ant forget?

 

It is hard to think of it now, holds like smoke –

But I did not forget.



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