The Dying Wasp

She vibrates, a chassis minus shock absorption. A painting, the nude descends a staircase, rings of Saturn etched in a vacuum tube. Or Eniac of twisted cords and switchboards. She isn't programmed to see light beams spraying through the trees, nor silver bearings of morning dew. There are no bees plunging like pistons in the flowers, no circuit board on the step. She climbs the jamb as a bot returning to its task. Monitors flicker as nanoseconds pass unnoticed, but the galaxy ends at the lintel. She's a child of Mir, suspended upside down in a universe where falling isn't death, but the failure of electrodes. Then silent as a dead star she descends. All drives cease functioning. She is still as a scarab, the light years casting sand dunes on sphinxes, until legs spasm as though coding a final matrix for iron butterflies waiting to be born.