“Love Poem with a Shop-Vac Full of Wasps” by Brittany Cavallaro

Outside, the swarm. The dog found it first,
ran crying, and now we’re both wearing balaclavas
in July. You in mittens, two sweatshirts, some Oakleys
from God knows where, hands up against the sliding glass.
After the poison, the exterminator, still the wasps
every morning. The dog’s face swollen now like a football.
In their nest they sleep well, we think. I want them
dead. We scheme. We wrap your face in scarves and then you’re
out there with a shovel, digging into their paper heart. It goes down,
down, its whorled brown chambers a fortress for the queen
to hide inside. It’s my turn to watch at the window, and I can’t stop
describing the nest—a cardboard seashell, a snow globe
full of needles. Or stingers, useless anyway
against your thick UMich sweatshirt. Once
someone would’ve punished me for that. For them.
The swell-up, the tight pace, his rage—I spent my days
placating. I planted him a careful garden. I was
a dull shovel until I wasn’t. Last year I cut down all the bushes
in the yard and threw them onto a stranger’s truck,
paid hundreds to have the bullshit hauled away. When I met you
I was still all knives. But your hands can stitch up anything,
caulk lines against the cracks. Within days I was disarmed—
now you’ve gotten out the shop-vac and set its mouth
next to the nest. A wasp or two goes in like soda up a straw.
Then more. They’re furious. They mourn. They siege
the vacuum, the windows, one finds its way in
only to die on the kitchen floor. And fine, I cry a little, I can only
dream of wielding such righteous anger. The vacuum
runs. We make dinner, rebandage the dog, find reasons
to touch each other. We sleep. Death batters the windows
and then quiets, rattles only a little at dawn. In the morning the nest
is empty of even the queen. The shop-vac sings to itself, pleased.
How decadent. How ruthless, the ways we retake ourselves.