There was a young boy sitting on a porch swing
Thinking about the nest of wasps nestled under the gutter
He had been attacked by the nest after venturing too close
And his legs and his arms were swollen like a mosquito pregnant with blood

He was thinking of war and he was thinking of his father
Who had gone to war and left without a trace of him

His grandmother was calling out his name but he did not hear
As he was lost in thought

His grandmother had lost her legs to diabetes
And now was rotting in this house, in her final years
She would call out to him for help and he often wouldn’t hear
And she would berate him with promises of nothing for him

She would sit and listen to an old clock radio
That only picked up religious broadcasts
And she would listen to the gospel being barked distorted
Through the tiny speakers that garbled the words

He began to watch the wasps from a safe distance
To pass the time or for distraction
After her disease took his grandmother
He did not eat for three days

Not that he was traumatized
But he didn’t know how to cook
And nobody had noticed
That she had died

While watching the wasps towards the end of the summer
In a dry day
He began to wander and wonder about her
And he turned on her radio

All he heard was static