Katie McMorris

cannibal ant from special object 3003

In 2013, Polish scientists discovered approximately one million living female wood ants and two million dead female wood ants trapped inside an old Soviet Union bunker. Three years later, scientists created a makeshift boardwalk for the ants to climb out and relocate to another nearby nest.

do they know how it feels
to watch their children grow
smaller and smaller as their
own home inhales them?
no one prepared me for that
gravity, for how it feels to drop
onto piles of your sisters.
your own dead sisters. and
the growling. the growling
from millions of stomachs.
the way we attacked our own.
i believe we can all fall into
cannibalism given the right
circumstances. i didnt even
have anything to defend
myself. no nuclear weapons.
how did i survive? i hid
among the dead.

*

when the scientists came,
they acted like it was our own
fault, that one board would
solve everything. and i guess
it did. but so many sisters
died as we climbed. so much
trampling. some never saw
the sunlight again. others
wanted to stay with the dead.
to eat them, you know. just
couldn’t get enough. but i
made it. they say im a lucky
one, that i can tell my children
about this one day. somewhere
children are laughing. but not here.
and not my children.

________________________________________________________________________________________

Katie McMorris is a writer and dancer. She lives and teaches in Oklahoma.