To Sit with Cockroaches

There is a bathroom in Chinatown where cockroaches emerge at random from cracks in the tile. I hid there.

I reported to her. She reported to him.

She failed to staff him at his first fundraising event. He unleashed on me. I agreed.

She temporarily hired her nephew to fill my pipeline. He was on summer break. She directed a colleague: “don’t say he’s my nephew”. She took him to lunch.

She waltzed in at 10:30. Left at noon to get her hair done.

She gave a colleague prospects that should have been mine. Never said she was her friend. The friend who once lived in her apartment.

I shut my office door.

Two years. Disgust simmering under my skin.

I stared at the prospect sheet, willing a name — history, capacity, affinity, anything.

Everyone knew. We said it elsewhere.

To sit with cockroaches: To survive the person who decides the room until you can leave them.

I no longer sit with cockroaches.

Trust the reader. Cut until it hurts. Earn the silence.

— Keira Haley · keirahaley.com