queen
If you can catch the queen early on in spring, you will save yourself sullen tears and endless strings of “I knows” and “There, theres.” If you can catch the queen in early spring, you can enjoy the morning walk without hateful memories of being stung. You can add some coffee to your breakfast rum. You can smell the sage blossoms and tickle the pillbugs, and harass the goldenrods, scold the banana slugs, who’ve spent the entire night ravishing your sunflower buds. If you can kill the queen, in early spring, you’ll destroy an entire season of pain and fear, and sometimes more, the eye swollen shut, the ulcerated sore. Thank God the bugs don’t know the score. He might ask, however, ‘Is it wrong to kill?,’ to which you’ll say, ‘Not in every case. We kill the food so we can eat, we kill the water so that we can drink, we kill the air so we can breathe, we kill the noise so we can think, we kill the lights so we can sleep.’ If you leave your radio at home, you might not hear those songs you shared. An entire year of depression spared. But keep that last part to yourself and pray this year’s yellow jacket stays away.