Paper Thin and Pricked to Bleed

Trying to reason with a narcissist Is like throwing rocks at a wasp’s nest If wasp’s could coldly smirk Or view their sting as victory not defense For to the egoist The offense is everything And they become so good At misdirection That you never hear the buzz Of their approach Til the sharp stab of their barbs Pierces through to your heart Despite the allergy To their poison Their repeated stings Are not enough to kill Just to make you suffer An endless supply of pollen The world their oyster And she their queen

This poem was written in response to a prompt given in my writing group. The prompt was: “Relate a human personality characteristic to a characteristic of an insect.” As soon as I heard the prompt, I shuddered.

With the exception of butterflies, I pretty much hate all insects, especially those that fly since you can’t seem to avoid these as easily as the ones that crawl. I can outrun a bug on the ground, even fast ones. I can’t necessarily outrun those that fly.

And yes, I will in fact run from many bugs I encounter, especially indoors. There just seems to be something that makes seeing bugs inside more threatening. As if, so long as they’re in their own domain they are just ordinary insects but when they have the courage to enter where they don’t belong and aren’t welcome they become warrior bugs.

Since I didn’t think about butterflies when the prompt was read, it was a given that my poem would be about negative characteristics. The first thing that came to mind was when a wasp got caught in my nightgown and stung me six or seven times before I could fling the gown over my head and onto the floor, shaking out my robe for at least a minute, just in case the wasp had friends with her, while fleeing from the room as I did so.

Even though there was a 15 minute time limit, I wanted to think about something that you might not ordinarily think of when trying to relate a wasp to human characteristics. I couldn’t avoid thinking in terms of the wasps sting, (what else was there that would characterize a wasp that was different from most other bugs?) and wanted to come up with something associated with a person going on the attack. The idea of a narcissist came to mind and it’s not what I thought would automatically come to mind when coming up with something to compare to a wasp.

I thought about it some more. A wasp’s venom activates pain receptors, which functions to deter other creatures from harming them. Since this is the purpose of their sting they only use this defense when threatened. I almost abandoned the idea since at first glance, since narcissists don’t seem to feel threatened by others. They attack to attack.

But then I realized that while narcissists may seem confident on the outside, internally they experience constant self doubt and a lack of self worth. Unable to cope with this, they cover it over by degrading and emotionally abusing others, which makes them feel better about themselves.

The comparison then made more sense as both wasps and narcissists can seem overtly aggressive, but in both cases their behavior is a means of defense. But in the case of wasps, the defense is adaptive, and in the case of narcissists the defense is maladaptive and indicative of a weakness not a strength.

If you were to write a poem that compared a human personality characteristic to the characteristics of an insect, what would you come up with?

Jenny Justice, David S., Dennett, Priyanka Srivastava, Sara Grace Stasi, Lisa Tomey, Samantha Lazar, Abigail Siegel, Nicholas Petrone, Greg Prince, Anna Rozwadowska, Sylvia Clare MSc. Psychol, Josie Elbiry, Hannah Erica, Bebe Nicholson, Elle Fredine, Steve B Howard, Sherry Kappel, Jackie Ann, Jun Wu

Natalie Frank (Taye Carrol) has had her poetry featured in several anthologies including Untimely Frost. Her fiction has been published in Haunted Waters Press, Weirdbook Magazine, Siren’s Call Publications, Lycan Valley Press and Zero Fiction among others. She holds a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. Her collection of poetry, Disguised I Breathe, In Love I Hold, can be found on Amazon under her pen name, Taye Carrol.

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