By Katherine J. Barrett

but you can call me pill bug

sow bug

cellar bug

even though I’m not a bug

but a perfect circle

from the sea

seven sliding plates

a set of legs for each

three eyes, no lungs

but gills, I tell you, gills

to breathe beneath

your sink

in the seepage

of your potted ferns

the dankness

of your drainage

in all your dark

and watery retreats

I am searching

like you, searching

a hollow to unwind

to cheer my conspecifics

stretch all fourteen feet

and more...

a space that speaks of antecedents

of our primordial, perpetual

upheaval

yet is home enough to peep:

I am here

I am wholly

in my element

Katherine J Barrett lives in rural Nova Scotia / Mi’kma’ki. Her work has appeared in The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, Quiddity International Literary Journal and many other publications. Her chapbook, a disobedient gathering: poems for plants who can’t stay put, was published in 2024. katherinejbarrett.com