In the basement bathroom
I almost step on them
With bare feet
Hundreds of husks
Of pill bugs
All converging
At the darkest corner
Of the concrete shower
They are piled on top
Of each other
Dead at the apex
Of their journey
I scoop them up
In my hands
Staring at their outstretched legs
And bent antennae
So light
I can hardly feel their bodies
Roll off my palm
And into the drain
For six years
You grabbed my stomach
Squeezing the flesh
With your hands
Sometimes you’d bite it
Purple ovals
From yellow teeth
That lasted for days
Other times
You shook the fat
Laughing
At the ripples you made
I’m just teasing,
You’d tell me,
That’s how you know
I love you
I tried pulling my knees
To my breasts
Held them with my arms
Your fingertips
Would push into my rib cage
Until I had no choice
Until I couldn’t breathe
Hot summer days
Of my childhood
Were for collecting
We lifted big stones
To find them
We called them
“roly-polies”
Because they curled
Into gray, armored
Cannonballs
On our palms
We used our fingernails
To force them to unroll,
To reveal their legs
Soft abdomens
And sometimes
Little white eggs
Once my sister and I
Shoveled dirt and moss
Into an old fish tank
We emptied our collection
Into it
Our roly-poly colony
We put the tank
On the rotting porch
And lay on our bellies,
Eyes level with the dirt
As we began to name them,
The largest pill bug
Began to eat the others
One by one,
Gnawing through the abdomen
Consuming through squirming legs
“Should we stop it?”
My sister asked.
I told her
“No, we let cannibals
Be cannibals.”
