There’s one on the wall of my office right now. I hate trying to kill these gross insects because they’re so flipping fast when they move, and then when you do kill them, they basically disintegrate into a weird silvery smudge.

It’s gliding along the wall, going back and forth, trying to shimmy its way up the wooden molding, but I think it’s unable to do it for whatever reason. Maybe it’s legs aren’t strong enough.

I just looked them up, and it turns out silverfish eat paper, which means they can destroy books, and I have several piles of books on the floor of my office (taken from my old classroom), and I wonder: Do I need to worry about them? Can the silverfish really destroy my books? How many silverfish are gliding their way through my basement at this very moment?

It almost made it up the molding just now. I thought it was going to fall off the wall, its little body sort of dangling as it tried to clutch the molding and pull itself up. But it gave up and scooted back down onto the drywall.

That’s when I squashed it. With a book catalog that came in the mail today. It left a streak of silver on the back page, smudging a few words: the advertising copy for a new book.

I don’t feel bad about killing the silverfish, but I do feel bad that it never made it up the molding.