Friend of the Flies

My weirdling child indentures herself to collecting
sticks in something called a garden
that is barely a garden yet full of flies. Watching
her from up high, my head stuck out
a window’s frame, I see no great violation’s taken place.
She is merely industrious, stockpiling
the many thin reeds she calls flutes on a wrought iron

patio table; her piles are neat. It’s the flies she’s faithful
to. She strokes their wings, makes
this space a space that she insists is a home for them.
They are, she insists, her friends,
and she is eager to get back to them, she explains while
taking a break to spoon soup up
to her lips, her dirt-furrowed brow tensing kitchen air.