There are cockroaches in the kitchen.
They leave shit in the coffee cups
and hide below the drain, waiting for me to leave.
I wash every plate twice.
I have already eaten too many of their eggs.
There are spiders in the attic.
They peek through the vents
and haunt me like hangmen
until night invites them to dine downstairs.
There are fleas in the living room,
waiting in sleeper cells beneath the carpet
to throw themselves on me in red grenades
faster than I can pick them off.
There are mosquitoes in the bathroom.
They hide under the rim of the toilet
and make babies in the bathwater.
I cannot shit without courting the West Nile virus.
I cannot shower without risking Malaria.
The carpet twitches like millions of antennae.
The furniture molts periodically.
They are becoming the walls, the floor, the pipes, the ceiling.
Soon legs will wriggle from the windows,
and the rooftop shingles will melt into wings.
Someday the house will scurry off
behind the stoves and refrigerators of the universe.
There are flies in my bedroom.
At first, the buzzing kept me awake.
Now it is a lullaby.
I wake wondering how many of them I have eaten in my sleep.
I crawl into bed wondering how many of them will eat me
when I sleep.
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The Editor-in-Chief for Touchstone 2011 is Lindsey Givens. She is a second year master's student in children's literature and she received her bachelor's in creative writing from the University of Arkansas in 2009.