4.
Shhiullumizh When I was giving my fourth delivery of last year of my thirty-eight babies, there was a lot of ‘shhiulumizh’ coming out of me. More so than during any of my previous delivery experiences. In our dialect, the blood is called shhiulumizh. Shhiulumizh is whiteyellow. Our body fluids are pretty screwed up. Oh I forget to tell you that we cockroaches don’t even have tears. You know we always hear those stories and anecdotes from the enemy, about how they cry and cry for things ridiculous to cry over. The fable is that the humans would cry over a lost one.
5.
Next life The last time I led my children to flee from an accustomed-to extermination, twenty of my children did not make it. I myself was too much in a hurry to escape so I ran without even turning back my head. But later that night I went back, wanting to cry and waiting to be sorrowful and all - for you know how much I would like to be a human - but the grief did not happen. The weep did not come. Next life, next life when I am a human, I will feel the sorrow and the tears. How amazing it is to lament, just as a human would. It was in my Nymph years when maman found me the husband. I was not ready then. I was not capable of understanding love. I was only a nymph. You cannot tell differences between an adult cockroach and a nymph cockroach, considering we only differ in 9
