Why Cockroaches Under My Bed Speak My Language

There's a perverse comfort in a shared exile.

The cockroaches come out at night, under the broken slats of the bed frame and the discarded
wrappers I don’t pick up anymore. They scuttle through the grime, their antennae twitching like
they’re searching for a pulse in this dead room. I hear them before I see them, claws scratching
on the floorboards, and I wonder if they recognize me—one of their own.

Leonard Cohen wrote, “There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” But no
light gets in here. Not in this room, not in me. Just the dust. It’s in my nose, caked along the
edges of my nostrils, collecting under my fingernails. When I touch my face, the grease from
my fingertips smears into my skin. I think I must smell like the underside of a trash can, and
I’m not sure if that thought makes me laugh or cry.

As a child the sunbeam, a defiant spear of gold, sliced through the grimy windowpane,
illuminating dust motes dancing in the air. I remember lying on my stomach on the worn-out
rug, the coarse fibers scratching my cheek. Even then, the dust seemed to cling to me, a
stubborn, invisible cloak. I could feel it settling into the creases of my skin, clinging to the
dampness between my thighs.

My mother would often say, "You're always getting dirty, child. Can't you keep yourself clean?"
But cleanliness, I realized later, was more than just washing. It was a state of being, a sense of
order and grace that seemed perpetually beyond my reach. I'd scrub my hands raw, trying to
scrub away the ingrained grime, the feeling of being perpetually soiled.

Even then, the world felt hazy, blurred by a layer of invisible dust. Colors seemed muted, sounds
muffled. I felt a constant, low-grade itch, a restlessness that had nothing to do with physical
discomfort. It was an internal itch, a yearning for something I couldn't name, a sense of
belonging that always seemed just out of reach.

Now that I am older and know about my pain I sit on the floor and look at them, my cockroaches.
I watch them move, their bodies glistening with that awful, perfect black sheen. I envy them.
They don’t care if they’re hated. They don’t care that their existence makes people gag. They
crawl through filth like it’s nothing because it is nothing—to them, it’s just home.

I’ve started to feel the dirt in places it shouldn’t be. My scalp itches, and I don’t know if it’s
dandruff or something worse. My thighs stick to my chair when I sit too long, and I can feel the
sweat turning sour. This dirt is me now. I don’t just live in it—I’ve become it.

I think I was born with something broken inside, some hole where the goodness should have
stayed but didn’t. It leaked out slowly, like sap running from a tree, and now I’m hollow. I am
what’s left after the goodness spills out. I am this skin that doesn’t smell like skin, this hair that
tangles itself into knots, these clothes that never quite feel clean.

I’m not like the cockroaches. That’s the worst part. They belong to something—nature, a
system, a cycle. I don’t belong anywhere. I am a disruption, a stain no one can scrub away. A
crack in the foundation where nothing good can grow.

“I’m sentimental, if you know what I mean,” Cohen said, and maybe that’s my problem too. I
still want someone to see me. Not the dirt, not the smell, not the mess, but me. The part that
used to be clean. The part I can’t find anymore.

The cockroaches crawl through the cracks in my life with a kind of grace I’ll never have. They
move forward. They don’t stop to think about what they are, what they’ve done, or what they’ll
never be.

But me? I sit here in the dark, inhaling dust, feeling it settle into my pores. I am waiting for
something. For light, for purpose, for a reason to wipe the dirt off my face. For now, I sit with
the cockroaches and let the dirt do what it will.