'Australia Has Almost One Hundred Different Species of Bull Ants' by Laila Miller

You have a way of making me forget about you, like I forget to be thankful when my arm’s not broken, or my migraine’s gone. The weather’s perfect, I’m energised and ambitious, and I forget to put on my impervious leather boots and gardening gloves, my floppy blue sun hat.

I rush outside, wild to find my dandelion fork, trowel, and shears. In my imagination, I’m ripping out every strand of choking crabgrass, every fiendish tap-rooted dandelion, every wayward wisteria vine.

I forget you’re waiting for me.

You follow a predictable pattern. I’m distracted, kneeling and digging, reaching and clipping, and you creep silently from your lurking place. I feel you, taking a tiny pinch from the bridge of my foot or the skin of my temple. Sometimes I crush you, only to find more of you.

The twinge of your bite begins as mild irritation. In an hour, the hot, itchy welt erupts from the bite zone like Mount Etna, or if you lingered for an eight-course meal, it’s the Hawaiian archipelago.

I know from experience the ache that’s coming. I scramble for antihistamine, lotion, ice cubes, and I say you Australian bastard, you’ve done it to me again. But I say it to myself, for who is there to tell, and I’ve only got myself to blame.

For three nights I go to bed with fists clenched so I don’t scratch the cursed spot.

For three days I rage. I want you out of my garden. I swear I’ll pour boiling water over your sorry bull ant ass for as long as it takes.

It always happens this way. My welt subsides to a flat red dot and then melts to nothingness, my anger subsides, and you’ve done it to me again. You’ve made me forget you.