She climbed in through
my open window,
her new chosen home
a potted passion flower plant,
its twisted vine drapery and
peculiar pale lavender blooms
providing protective shade
Spinning her circle of woven triangles,
she quietly wove gauzy strands
to spindly stems and window frame
So tiny and round, like a miniature egg,
with protruding needle-width legs,
a blackened bodice and milky, sharp-edged Rorschach markings
I lovingly named her: Spike
I swatted flies for Spike,
snatching them from the air,
making sure they remained a bit alive before
flinging weakened offerings
into her latticework snare
Pouncing, biting, expertly wrapping her gift in silk,
she devoured bugs in their entirety
A grotesque buffet
I gleefully provided
Like a mother with a miraculous newborn
I sat to marvel at her for hours
At night, I’d wake and worry about Spike,
wondering if she was hungry or thirsty
From a transparent shallow dish in my palm
I flung glimmering moonlit droplets from my fingertips,
the water clinging and sliding down filmy orb strands
Days and weeks breezed by
I hovered nearby with magnifying glass in hand
Analyzing her stillness and
swift movements at feeding time,
studying the intricacies of the new web she spun each dawn
I, totally entranced by and
enthralled with
my new baby
I proudly introduced her to houseguests
Politely they nodded,
flinching when I
pinched a fly off their lapel or edge of a plate
to feed my beloved Spike
My husband forever nodded passively from the couch
I’d squeal over the cuteness of her spinneret
Oh! I’d say,
She’s hungry!
Replies were mumbled,
Mmm hmm, yes dear
His own absorption cradled by a handheld screen
a homing radar, ingesting him
while he curled passively into it
As autumn crept into summer’s gasping dusk
I had to admit…
Spike was growing much, much
much larger, larger than perhaps
a garden spider should become…
No longer sufficient were red crane flies
plucked from drunkenly zigzagging in the air
Moths became but a snack when I proffered them
to where she loomed languidly in
the center of her sticky spun net
(which now outgrew the window and plant in size)
But Spike always waited patiently for each decadent morsel
Thinking she required greater sustenance,
I started to trap small birds for her
I bestowed wriggling field mice to her web
Rabbits could no longer scamper safely on my property
But nothing quenched Spike’s ravenous appetite
She’d take sight of my triumphant clutches
Each hunted animal dangling and
jerking deplorably in my hand
Scuttling across her web,
the feast was tossed just before she hungrily lunged,
then wrapped it half-alive into a tight cocoon
Piercing her fangs satisfyingly deep into warm flesh,
her prey became liquified, then
sank languidly and forevermore into the abyss of death
Spike contentedly suckled at the swaddled offerings for hours
Just like my own grown boys used to do at my breast
Only, these days they scoff at my offers of care
and ignore me from behind shut door bedrooms
But Spike allows me to love her
she pays no heed to my constant fretting and fussing
I couldn’t help but want to caress her
to see if she’d clutch me with her eight legs,
hold me in a tender embrace that my husband resisted,
and my boys had long outgrown…
Spike’s eight suede-hued eyes
melted into my own two
I stepped toward her
Suddenly
Two sharp pokes
Then
I felt no pain
Here she was against me at last!
Never before had I been so wholly held
I began to spin and spin
like on a dizzying tilt-a-whirl
I felt oozy and warm
sedated and subdued
At long last, love!
love, love,
whole and
consumed
While I descended into darkness
Spike cackled in the sepia light of the window,
her chuckle shaking
silvery strands of web and
the dried yellow coils hanging from
wilted passion flowers.
INSTANT NOODLES 