Everyone who grew up in a house with cheap furniture

& bad wiring knows this:

cockroaches are the only thing that will outlive us.

They do not fear the light. They do not die when they should.

They can live without their heads for a week.

When I was seven, I crushed one under my shoe,

but it kept moving. Legs twitching, body split but not broken.

That was the first lesson: some things are too stubborn to die.

When I was sixteen, I stopped flinching when I saw them.

(some people can be conditioned into anything.)

At twenty, I learned I was one of them.

Obstinate and thigmotactic,

I have outlived my own kindness.

They will not write poems about me, but if they do,

they will not use the word beautiful.