WASP NEST

Ancestral goal of nothingness

a poison pill now dissolving

in mom's eighth cup of coffee,

caffeine a weak pigment

brushed against the blank

canvass of a privileged life, 

long suspected as unearned

and so rejected incorrectly,

and now there's nothing left

for home or clothes or future

but at least at last the need

that masks the question mark

consumes the mind that might have

sought to crack the shell

had it not found shame instead

to keep it in its place,

a place that sprang from nowhere

and morphed into a big, fine house,

and another in the snow,

and another even bigger later

when the need for it was less

and then the chase forever after

and the shame, the chase, the shame

the houses and the blankness,

and then sigh, at last the debt and then the worry

and the questions never asked