Residents of My Rental House

This bedroom was for my son, but instead
a coiling creature sleeps here that is not a worm.
Then there is a worm, I think. A wormlike thing
in the toilet.

There are so many black-pepper baby
spiders, scurrying. There are giant
cockroaches that do not scare
my child.

He doesn’t live here. Neither do the roaches.
I always find them legs up. There are individual
ants, a white butterfly that’s just
a moth.

Large lingering things that look like mosquitoes
but aren’t. Each time I enter a room, I find them
lower & lower to the ground, like balloons: breathless
& grieving.

Why weren’t their strings good enough
for little hands to hold?

Why are there never ladybugs or decorative
insects with magician wings, the kind
you’d catch & keep? Where
are the lightning bugs we caught in jars as kids?

Remember those? How each time they
blinked
you could smell the earth? Remember reaching
for one with both hands, praying?