Every Fig Has a Wasp Inside

<p><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>What do you do with the things that made you-when they also tried to unmake you? </strong></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>In </span><em style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Every Fig Has a Wasp Inside</em><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)> Tian Sanchez-Ballado excavates the body-queer CubaRican Southern chronically ill-and asks what it means to carry what cuts and feeds you in the same breath. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>These poems are not an exorcism. They are what happens when the haunting stays. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Here: Wasps dissolve into figs. Lunchables erase pastelitos. Insurance companies feast on your bones. What devours you becomes sweetness. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>This isn't a coming-of-age story. </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>It's what survival looks like when it lingers. </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Not confession-</span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>canon</strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>. </span></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Not healing-</span><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>staying</strong><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>. </span></p><p></p><p><span style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>Like the fig that needs the wasp's body to fruit these poems know: </span></p><p><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>That tenderness has teeth. </strong></p><p><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>That inheritance is both wound and offering. </strong></p><p><strong style=color: rgba(0 0 0 1)>That sometimes the sweetest thing you can do is refuse to be digested.</strong></p>