Remnants

The wasps made that nest out of paper. Actual paper — chewed wood fiber and saliva, layered into a shell thinner than an envelope, strong enough to hold a colony through a season of Wyoming weather. Then they finished, and left, and never came back to it. Wasps do not reuse a nest.

Everything here outlasted whatever made it. Seed pods still standing after the flower is gone. Grass holding its shape through a winter it did not survive. A heart cut into an aspen by two people who are somewhere else now, and a tree that scarred over it and kept the mark anyway.

Nothing here is sad. It is just what is left, which is usually more than people expect.