DECK CHAIR

I have to sit still
Lest roaches climb up my legs
When I was young
I didn’t sit still
A roach walked up my legs
It was gone 
Before I could shake it off
They say it went inside me
Maybe the roach is still inside me
When you are faced with a pack of roaches
You must sit still
When you sit still, roaches sit still
If you don’t sit still
They will march up your legs
To sit still means
Sit quiet
They can hear you
They know where you are when they hear you
They will climb up your legs
I sit quiet now 
I sit in the dark, hope they cannot see me
Maybe they have night vision, I don’t know
Even if they don’t see me, they might smell me
Do they have nose, those roaches
I can’t see them through the dark
I am alone
I put my legs up
Lest the creeps creep up on my legs
Then to my waist, then to my head
Don’t underestimate the roaches
Don’t undercalculate the roaches
I feel itchy here and there
A roach always smells, I know 
The roach smell
It smells uncertainty
If you smell a roach, it’s near you
Would they spread their wings to land on me
They also have wings
Who in her right mind
Put wings on a roach
They want to climb up my legs
They are probably looking for the roach inside me
They want to rescue
The roach inside me
The roach inside me calls for help
Roaches are everywhere
They follow where I go 
They try to climb up my legs
A roach on your body
Is a bad omen 
When a roach lands on your body
Something untoward will happen
They climb up your legs to show you who they are
The roach inside me is restless
I laughed if off when
They accused me of katsaridaphobia
I used to get a kick out of
Killing roaches
I let some of the roaches live
I removed their legs, their hands
Their whiskers, and their wings, I turned them upside down
Oh, how much enjoyed the sight of roaches 
Struggling to get back on their missing legs
I poked them with a pin
Cockroach eggs were there for me to crush for fun
It was fun, really fun
In my past life
I must have been a roach
In my next life
I might be a roach again
And the roaches I killed will be humans
Then it’s their turn to get back at me
If I let a roach climb up my legs now
The rest of them will follow
In no time my body will be covered in roaches
Once a roach is on you
It doesn’t know how to climb down
Before, roaches weren’t much of a problem
It didn’t matter how many of them were on me
I was able to shake them off.

DECK CHAIR

DECK CHAIR

original poem pending