francEyE


AMBER SPIDER

As I turned to leave the bathroom I saw on the white counter
an amber spider, big as my thumbnail from leg tip to leg tip,
dead on its back. Who ever sees a spider on its back? I stared
and stared. Something about it seemed wrong, out of balance.
I kept thinking it would disappear if I stared long enough but it
didn't, and I didn't want to put it in the trash because how
could I be sure it was dead? Do spiders play possum? I didn't
know, but I left it and tried to forget it but where did it come
from? How did it get there? Where did I come from? How did I
get here? I always have claimed to love this apartment but I've
never felt at home here not in thirteen years. I started to
remember the place I lived in before, with my daughter, a dirty,
tiny apartment that was really half a house someone had
illegally divided long before we got there. It was dark,
inconvenient, jammed with clothing, books, and old
newspapers. But we got a cat, then two cats; someone was
always there to welcome us home. Here all I have is a maybe-
dead spider.

Spiders don't have families. How can they live each one all
alone like that? The same way I do, I guess; it's hard. Just
because this was what I was raised to expect doesn't make it
fun. How did I get here? Where the hell am I going? What's the
point?

I went to look at the spider and she had moved. She was still
on her back but she had moved. I think I'll move too, I
thought. But first I got a glass and a piece of paper and
captured the spider, who had a broken leg, and took her outside
where she sure went fast once she found herself right-side
up—fast across the white railing and down its edge to the
underside where she vanished in shadow in a corner I imagined
to be much like the little dirty apartment I left thirteen years
ago, a place something like home.