Months later, when my husband finally scratched my bare back, the itchy center part I couldn’t reach, tiny sugar ants streamed out, then carpenter ants and termites, crickets and earwigs and millipedes, then silverfish, furry disoriented bumblebees, a few fireflies, green grasshoppers, and moths with large eyes glaring from their wings. He leapt out of bed to scoop them into glass jars with metal lids and line them up on the headboard. The snakes settled into the bathtub, its candlelit waters still smelling of vanilla and blood orange, little waves lapping the sides. In Sharpie, he catalogued his find by genus and species on the back of his hand and forearm. I missed the electricity of all those wings inside my skin. This will never teach him, I thought.

Bio: Kathleen McGookey