Wasps

After the first belch of flame it slowed to a steady burn and we watched it together, watched how when I scraped the soil rhythmically backwards and forwards the charred remains of the nest would reignite, the air feeding the fire. I don't know if queens slumber for the winter in these deep recesses of earth – they asked and I shrugged, that's how it was at the end, but we stayed there expecting something to change, a last apologetic huddle, until what was left through the cold was only the memory of warmth.

It's amazing how much of the bulging sham of life we cram into the spaces we inhabit; the past plastered to walls like insulation for the soul; the sagging mattress buoyed by bundles of the before - and a shock how easily it can be disposed of – a torn billet from the Musee D'Orsay; a faded scrap of cloth from a sweatshirt she bought somewhere near the start. What I see is us queuing in a downpour, laughing as we soak to the bone, as we watch the snarling umbrella-man circling nearby – his only missed sale in a line of tourists stretching half a street away.

'It rains! Do you want girls get wet?'

My aim is to fill one bag. I think perhaps I'm Dean Moriarty sitting here – even I understand though fantasies are useless when no-one else gets the point of reference – the kids I know for a fact have no interest yet in 1950's American Literature; the dog shows more promise and once tore to shreds, then buried, my only copy of Under The Volcano; less a statement on the human condition though than a juvenile protest at a lack of decent chow.

Our friends are in a constant state of shock – blame me wildly and with only circumstantial evidence for tearing apart the fabric of their universe; even though their lives will go on much the same through all of this. Friends are not the victims when families fall apart i'm pretty sure, although all of this is new for everyone.

There's something right about just one bag – it leaves you somewhere to go – from that point onwards I mean.

She came in wailing that summer for the second time and I soothed the sting and held her until the sobs became less interesting than the kindling I was slicing. She helped me carry some and then watched as I screwed up newspaper and built the fire. Later, after I had kissed her and watched her fall asleep, but with light still enough, I made my way up to the furthest point of the plot, parting the briar and skirting the den i'd made from pallets that her mother had said would just be an endless cycle of splinters and grazed knees. The wasps had seen to it though that none of this had come to pass. I quite liked listening to the drone, easier with covered skin on a cold evening – and they would catch my ears and hair, clumsy or drunk on the promise of their approaching death as the summer sun faded. I removed the plastic coffin from around the prawn sandwich and held it out as offering, and then crumbled it near the opening in the earth. I waited for a few moments, expected them to swarm and gluttonise the pink goo that had gushed onto the soil – but whether they sensed something, or like me had never enjoyed garage-wrought seafood snacks that had seen better days – I'm just not sure.

When the screaming had ended and she had blamed the fourteen-hour shift at the hospital for forgetting that I hated shellfish and then I had said it wasn't about the fucking sandwich and she had said what the fuck was it about then you useless fucker and I had slammed the door and then opened it again to say it was never about the fucking sandwich and then slammed the fucking fucker of a door again – really hard, and then stomped about imagining I was stomping her head into the stupid fucking earth.

Fact 1: The markings on every wasp are unique like snowflakes or fingerprints, allowing them to recognise each other as individuals. Fact 2: Wasps have no definitive flight pattern and frequently smash into each other face first when flying. Fact 3: Wasps have the ability to count up to five but struggle with fractions.

When the screaming and stomping had ended we sat across a table from each other and couldn't remember the last time we made each other happy and so we decided to put an end to the screaming and unhappiness - and so I think love doesn't really make a difference in the end.

I am not Dean Moriarty – a train station in Palermo in the morning rush hour has the same steady stream of black shoes as a train station in Northampton in the morning rush-hour. Under the right conditions, I can make a pint of beer last two hours and a large Americano one. I find hardest the first moments of waking where I still reach out for warmth or when I hear the laughter of those who don't belong to me...and then I keep having the same dream - I fall from the bed, throw back the sheets expecting a thick living seam of angry wasps across the bedsheets. It soon goes. I shave. I close a door. I have a hundred plastic conversations throughout the day.

When the others had gone i'd turned the soil with a spade and pressed it down with my heel and then put the petrol can and the spade back in the shed. It was almost dark when I came into the glare of the kitchen. Above I could hear the taps emptying and the tank refilling – the kids playing before bathtime. I was reaching for the taps but knew that if I turned them on, the water above would run cold and that this would cause a problem. My muddied hands and arms hovered stupidly between one thing and another and then I noticed a wasp crawling across the skin of my forearm – it was listing, dazed and confused, and I think it was waiting for an ending of sorts.