#78

Papery wings a buzzing blur. Carrying striped body of black and yellow, hard and fragile. Flying among leaves and branches and mailbox and then. Crisp fall air becomes dark, damp, wet, soft, pulsing. Walls closing in. It reacts the only way it knows how to react to danger and plunges its stinger, pumping poison. The whole world lurches, squeezes him. A typhoon catches hold and lifts him and throws him from his prison and he lands with a splat on a sidewalk. A man stands there, coughing, sputtering, spitting. When he catches his breath he leans in wondering at the wasp, crawling away, slowly, painfully, dragging mucus hot and sticky, coating its whole body. Both marveling at this this sudden and uninvited trauma.