Overwhelm, A Colonial Swarm

Originally Published in So to Speak Journal

Summer of 2023 was the time of flies. Dawning into our neighborhoods, touching every
orifice of our sense of self, becoming an enzyme decomposing our hope. Their squirming

children arose in hoards, outgrowing our capacity to resist. Our children swapped their toy
swords for fly swatters, running through suburbia with newly minted slaying skills protecting

what was once ours, what now belongs to them. Flies do not borrow. We borrowed paradise
from a fig tree. A ripe fruit word ferdous pops out of your lips and rides the breath until

your teeth unleash a burst birthing the slithering snake from its boom. It means garden, not
like an orchard but like the labyrinth of laundry we hung in our yards. Every rope a vine,

every baby gown a sprouted leaf. My cousin called just as I was grabbing mail. She saw fly
shadows haunting the screen. “It’s terrible here, it’s hell.” She lamented from across a collapsing 

ocean talking of Lahaina burning, families unable to find each other, water rerouted to resorts,
the tourism industry protecting the eroding pockets of vacationers.

Their crisis set mold on my inconvenience.
                                                                    Inconvenience is the birthplace of crisis.

Buzzing flies whispered prophesy in my ears. Thumbing through my mail I find
an overripe electricity bill. I sniff downwind air from the resort. A faint smell of insecticide.