Introductory Piece for Bhanu's class
The steps behind the hedge were rotted, but in a way that only I could see. Painted wood creaked, and a hundred thousand ants swarmed under the holes covered by the welcome mat. They each had names, like kko or is or gl or any of a million syllables which, spoken together, rendered themselves unheard.
I followed one down, and soon learned that ant stories are not like people stories. The amber dust made paintings on the wall, and the regurgitated meat, my uneaten half a ham sandwich, would feed the world for weeks to come.
(I just posted this because I wrote it. The assignment was to visualize ourselves at the threshold of a childhood home, observe, and write. I don't know where I'm taking it, but maybe it'll be a cool weird short short story (like 5 pages at most) about the insect-like nature of apparent decay that people always hide away, drawing upon the air of my childhood.)