In the event of a disaster

Cockroaches kept appearing in the bach I was renting.
I trapped one under a glass, phoned my friend whose husband runs a pest control business, organised an extermination, and then got the hell out for three nights.
When I came back I swept up a few dead cockroaches.
Their legs were curled up and in death they looked tiny.
One wasn’t quite dead and its antennae weakly twitched.
I chucked it out the window to die in the bark and weeds.
Suddenly I remembered the cockroach I’d trapped the other night.
Under the glass it was very still but when I banged the floor with my fist it moved a little.
Looking at it I felt bad.
I should’ve let it go and die quickly from the poison but I was too scared not to leave it there.
On TV that guy who used to be on Shortland Street was promoting Civil Defence:
“In the event of a disaster the first thing we’d try to do is reach our loved ones.”
I looked at that trapped cockroach.
It was a lonely, starving creature and all its loved ones were dead and dying.
I felt really, really bad.
But I still left it there.