If I come back as a silverfish,
you’d need to look quick
to see my face, which anyway
you couldn’t catalog.
I’ll be scurrying fast
to evade your plucking me
into a piece of scented tissue.
The whip of my tiny antenna
will publish my exile
from old texts of the wise and frugal.
But you must remember
though I digest paper
which you think strange
and I may seem to you
less than a blot of ink
and am so small and light
I would not register on your scales,
if you should crush me
as I hurry towards a crack
between wall and baseboard,
to me as wide as heaven and hell,
the silver of my name and trail
will weigh on your mind forever.
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