How to Get Rid of Fruit Flies

“Fruit flies have a life-cycle of 10 days, giving them plenty of time to punish you for leaving moist, fermenting, organic material in which they may lay eggs. Most fly trap ideas only serve to illustrate the flies' progress in taking over your home, and some will themselves provide a breeding ground. Sanitation is the only effective resolution.” - How to Get Rid of Fruit Flies, wikiHow.

The experts suggest fumes off the last inch of bourbon,
the lees of wine. They counsel lopping off the bright heads
of the flowers I brought home just last week,
the flowers I contemplated bringing home today.
And while the red-eyed things describing ragged orbits
around the fruit bowl might be killed, I know my wife’s rage
won’t be funneled, trapped, or disposed of neatly.
But still, I try to imagine myself bagging apples, burping each sac
before stowing the lot in the fridge. I try to imagine
my wife coming up behind me as I hop and swat,
palms smarting. And laughing.

Sanitize the counters? Launder the mop head? Ha!
I could cover us in plaster and granite dust, pour concrete
into private geometries…and there would still be the wet mouth,
the scent escaping closed legs between us.
No, the experts have nothing for this pestilence.
Every word is flyspecked. Every glance wriggles.
And so my wife’s rage, being fruitful, multiplies.

Her message to me, week after week after weak?
A bowl of thin-skinned pears, rotting.