There's a caterpillar in my right ear canal.
It's almost neon-green,
with poison-orange bulbs,
the color of grafted cactus.  

It's squeezed its way quite far in, stuffed
itself in as if it were an expanding foam earplug,
the spines stuck in my inner pink skin.

I lean my head to the right, knock
the left side with the flat of my palm.
Eggs, the same as desiccant beads,
the color of earwax, pitter-patter out and onto my table
as if they were plastic raindrops on a trampoline.

There will come a day when it cocoons itself, and that moth
flies free, but until that day, I will continue
to turn it towards you
every time you speak.