Abstract

Fruit flies exposed
to many dead fruit flies
lose their fat stores,
die more quickly
than those kept naive.
I who have lived long now
and will die of my living,
not of my grief,
and more than once
from a public garden
stole roses—
red ones and pink ones,
scented and not—
stammer before these
troubled and truthful fruit flies.

This poem appears in the October 2026 print edition.