"I've been thinking about it & I think cockroaches are my spirit animal. They follow me & are hard looking but easy to squish."

-journal entry, 14 August 2015.

a poem

roaches

I love cockroaches

the way they breathe

through their skin

if you submerge them

in water they hang limp—

a simulation of death

but once they dry out

their antennae twitch

& they sprint into the dark.

I am saturated— 

all my orifices shut 

laying in stasis

entombed like sewage 

I wait for the sun

to dry my flesh